Which command decrypts an encrypted archive to produce the original tar.gz file?

• A. gpg -o file.tar.gz -d file.tar.gz.gpg
• B. gpg -e -R Evan file.tar.gz
• C. tar -zxvf file.tar.gz
• D. cat file.txt

Answer: (A)

Decrypting with GPG is what this question tests. The correct approach uses the decryption option and directs the output to the original archive file. Specifically, running decryption on the encrypted file and saving the result as file.tar.gz yields the original tar.gz archive, ready for extraction later.

This works because the -d (or --decrypt) flag tells GPG to convert the encrypted data back to plaintext, and the -o option specifies where to write that plaintext. So decrypting file.tar.gz.gpg and writing to file.tar.gz produces the original compressed archive.

The other options don’t fit: one option encrypts instead of decrypts, another would attempt to extract a tarball but only after it’s already decrypted, and the last simply outputs a text file without decrypting or handling an archive.