Getting some garbage text when tar-ing a file

Question

when I run the following command:

tar -c music.tar iTunes\ Music/

But I get the following garbage output. b����n5���z��ԊV_o�P�O3|�b���i�Pl�jH��8��z5����ڕ?~D|_($�|b��:���š`�s7 �%z\��Jj����K����Z��V�)�A4 2��}�4�(�?#�P��ykX �Q�e<�w�U����Y�8n��s� 1B��F.f� �X9Lb=8��@����|�h�d�Dz�I��L�]������-����gx��l囧���n�cs{f���f���6�M(�u��6��|pX�nH�V���$�ь�����7��n�H���Yua��Xn�;{�JP�����7�@R�f_旾j�*����3M�z�s9���"��0�$1�ɂ7:w�������|D_�����EjtO��߉�����PޘY�-� xVF���Uwky�u�Yt�h ���K �nJh�]K�J-�2��#Q̬���~�~B)OޑMĤ�� "��6#�Q,uNG�~��4t�>=^C

I don't really care if I'm just missing some font library. But I haven't run this to completion because...well i'm not really sure what it's doing.

any help appreciated.

Answer 1

You have to use -cf, otherwise it just dumps the output to stdout (the window), which is exactly what you're seeing. You would use -c alone to pipe it to another program (though you can use > file.tar).