Which command would you use to list the contents of a tar archive without extracting it?

The command used to list the contents of a tar archive without extracting it is indeed "tar -t". The "-t" option stands for "list" and is specifically designed for this purpose. When you run "tar -t -f archive.tar", it will output the names of all the files contained within the specified archive file, giving you an overview of its contents.

The other options serve different functions:

The "-l" option is not a valid option for the tar command; it does not perform any specific operation related to listing an archive's contents.

The "-v" option is used to enable verbose mode, which provides detailed output while performing operations like extracting or creating archives but does not specifically list the contents on its own.

The "-x" option is used for extraction, signifying that you want to extract files from the archive rather than merely list them.