bzip2 compresses  files  using  the Burrows-Wheeler block sorting text compression algorithm, and Huffman coding.   Compression  is  generally considerably   better   than   that   achieved   by  more  conventional LZ77/LZ78-based compressors, and approaches the performance of the  PPM family of statistical compressors.
To list the contents of a tar.bz2 file, use tar command as follows:
# tar -jtvf linuxarticles.tar.bz2
To search for a particular filename called README.txt, enter:
# tar -jtvf linuxarticles.tar.bz2 | grep -i README.txt
Where,
    t: List the contents of an archive
    v: Verbosely list files processed (display detailed information)
    j: Filter the archive through bzip2 so that we can open compressed (decompress) .gz tar file
    f filename: Use archive file called filename

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