I have:

    function extract () {
      if [ -f $1 ] ; then
        case $1 in
          *.tar.bz2)   tar xjf $1     ;;
          *.tar.gz)    tar xzf $1     ;;
          *.bz2)       bunzip2 $1     ;;
          *.rar)       unrar e $1     ;;
          *.gz)        gunzip $1      ;;
          *.tar)       tar xf $1      ;;
          *.tbz2)      tar xjf $1     ;;
          *.tgz)       tar xzf $1     ;;
          *.zip)       unzip $1       ;;
          *.Z)         uncompress $1  ;;
          *.7z)        7z x $1        ;;
          *)     echo "'$1' cannot be extracted via extract()" ;;
           esac
       else
           echo "'$1' is not a valid file"
       fi
     }

instead

tar czvf

"create ze vucking file"

tar xzvf

"extract ze vucking files"

I have an alias "x" setup to run:

      atool --extract $*

That will unpack "anything", into a sub-directory if necessary. Something I use more than any other alias.

There are man pages though, but still I suppose that might be useful to you.

Anyways, the only options for tar that I commonly use are "c", "x", and "t"; I will use other programs for decompression, and for extracting into a directory, will use cd.

If the man pages had useful examples the “cheat sheets” would not be needed. So “duh use man pages” is a wrong and annoying answer in this context.

Yes, I suppose you are right, the man pages do not have sufficient examples. So, it is good that they add more there. (The man page still explains what all of the options are; now we have this "cheat sheets" with the examples, too.)