title: TAR-ing on-the-fly
body: <p>I'm trying to fetch all files within all directories on our SAN. I'm starting with my local to test out how I want to do it. So, at my Documents directory:
      <code>ls -sR &gt; documents_tree.txt</code></p>
  
  <p>With just my local, that's fine. It gives the exact output I want. But since I'm doing it on our SAN, I'm going to have to compress on-the-fly, and I'm not sure the best way of doing this. So far I have:
      <code>ls -sR &gt; documents_tree.txt | tar -cvzf documents_tree.tgz documents_tree.txt</code></p>
  
  <p>When I try to check the output, it is impossible for me to un-tar the file using <code>tar -xvf documents_tree.tar</code> after I have gunzipped it. </p>
  
  <p>So, what is the correct way to compress on-the-fly? How can I accurately check my work? Will this work when performing the same process on a SAN?</p>