How do I automate or make an alias of this task?

[Rytron]

Eureka!

tar czvf ~/Documents/Software/SportsTracker_4.1.1/SportsTrackerBackup.tar.gz ~/.sportstracker

All thats left is to put this into an alias.

alias stb='tar czvf ~/"Documents/Software/SportsTracker_4.1.1/SportsTrackerBackup.tar.gz" ~/.sportstracker'

[Rytron]

The only downside is that it backs the .sportstracker file in an archive with this structure:
/home/rytron/.sportstracker/
Do I need to change something in the tar czvf part (or use another form of compression?). It's no big deal but if I could only backup the .sportstracker without the full path structure, it'd be better.

[kaibob]

..Do I need to change something in the tar czvf part (or use another form of compression?). It's no big deal but if I could only backup the .sportstracker without the full path structure, it'd be better.

I use zip rather than tar, but zip saves relative directores. For example, if the working directory is my home directory, the following command saves the documents directory and all files in the documents directory but not the full path.

zip test.zip documents/*

If I unzip test.zip, it creates the documents directory in the current working directory.

Zip also has an option that ignores all directories, but if I understand correctly you want to retain the one directory.

[Rytron]

I use zip rather than tar, but zip saves relative directores. For example, if the working directory is my home directory, the following command saves the documents directory and all files in the documents directory but not the full path.

zip test.zip documents/*

If I unzip test.zip, it creates the documents directory in the current working directory.

Zip also has an option that ignores all directories, but if I understand correctly you want to retain the one directory.

How do I get zip to ignore all directories? What option do I use?

This kept the full path structure also just like tar did. The only difference was the better compression ratio that zip offered.

alias stb='zip ~/"Documents/Software/SportsTracker_4.1.1/SportsTrackerBackup.zip" ~/.sportstracker'

[pbrane]

try bzip2

tar cjvf ~/Documents/Software/SportsTracker_4.1.1 SportsTrackerBackup.tar.bz2 ~/.sportstracker

Also the way to get only the files in ~./sportstracker is to cd to that directory and archive from there.

cd ~/.sportstracker && tar cjvf ~/Documents/Software/SportsTracker_4.1.1/SportsTrackerBackup.tar.bz2 *

[kaibob]

How do I get zip to ignore all directories? What option do I use?

This kept the full path structure also just like tar did. The only difference was the better compression ratio that zip offered.

alias stb='zip ~/"Documents/Software/SportsTracker_4.1.1/SportsTrackerBackup.zip" ~/.sportstracker'

You use the -j option, which is described in the man page as:

Store just the name of a saved file (junk the path), and do not store directory names. By default, zip will store the full path (relative to the current path).

Thus, for example

zip -j test.zip /home/kaibob/documents/*

As to your second question, execute the following in a terminal window while the current working directory is the parent directory of .sportstracker. This is a bit cumbersome with an alias and might best be handled as a function or separate shell script.

zip ~/"Documents/Software/SportsTracker_4.1.1/SportsTrackerBackup.zip" .sportstracker/*

[Rytron]

Thank you all for your assistance. Cheers.