Ways to view the contents of a tar package file

1. tar file:

code$ tar tvf etc.tar 
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2014-09-12 22:20 etc/
-rw-r--r--root/root       153 2013-12-15 23:26 etc/inittab
-rw-r--r--root/root 293 2014-09-12 22:15 etc/fstab       

2. tar.gz Documents:

/code$ GZIP-DC socket.tar.gz | Tar TVF-
drwxrwxr-x charles/charles   0 2014-06-09 07:41 socket/-rw-rw-r--
charles/charles 1165 2014-06-09 00:03 socket/server6.c

Or:

/code$ tar ztf socket.tar.gz 
socket/
socket/server6.c
socket/client6.c

3. TAR.BZ2 Documents:

/code$ BZIP2-DC bootchart-0.9.tar.bz2 | Tar TVF-
drwxrwxr-x ziga/ziga         0 2005-11-14 01:40 bootchart-0.9/drwxrwxr-x
ziga/ziga         0 2005-11-14 01:40 bootchart-0.9/examples/
-rw-rw-r--ziga/ziga 120466 2005-11-14 01:40 bootchart-0.9/examples/    Bootchart.tgz

Or:

/code$ TAR-JTF  bootchart-0.9.tar.bz2
bootchart-0.9/
bootchart-0.9/examples/
bootchart-0.9/ Examples/bootchart.tgz