taring stuff (what's the best way)

[Luke Francl <fran0382@tc.umn.edu>]

I back up my home directory every couple of months (yeah, yeah, I should
do it more often). This means I always have to relearn how to use tar,
since I forget in the mean-while.

What is the best way to tar gz a directory? I'm doing

tar -cz dir > dir-2000-08-18.tar.gz

Do you have to use the redirection, or is there a way to make tar write
output to a file?

Thanks,

Luke