RE: dired-do-compress does not *uncompress* .tgz or .tar.gz files

[Drew Adams]

> > am I missing something?  When pressing Z in dired on a X.tgz file
> > dired-do-compress does not uncompress the file instead it
> > compresses it to an X.tar file even though the function advertises
> > also to uncompress files.
> 
> I think that mechanism is by intent limited to single files.  But a
> tar archive can hold a whole directory tree.

A couple of people have already explained that a tar archive is
uncompressed, and X.tar is the correct result of uncompressing
X.tgz.

As for `Z': you can apply it to any number of files, not just a
single file.  Just mark the files to be compressed, then `Z'.

But I guess you (Michael) meant something different by "limited to
single files".