How to - create and extract a tar.gz archive

 Create an archive
tar czf /path/to/output/folder/filename.tar.gz /path/to/folder

Extract an arhive
tar -zxvf /path/to/folder/filename.tar.gz
gunzip -c /path/to/folder/filename.tar.gz

Extract one file from the archive
gunzip -c /path/to/folder/filename.tar.gz | tar -xvf - path/within/archive/filename.ext

View files in an archive
gunzip -c /path/to/folder/filename.tar.gz | tar -tvf -