How to compress and decompress files ?

Making TAR

tar -cvf <dest-file>.tar <source-file>

Making GZIP of TAR file

gzip <source-file>.tar

Extracting TAR file

tar -xvf <source-file>.tar

Extracting GZIP file (.gz) to TAR file

gunzip <source-file>.gz

Example

gunzip abc.gz

gunzip abc.tar.gz

Extracting tar.gz file by single command

tar -zxvf <source-file>.tar.gz