Untar a particular directory from a tar.gz?

nyheat · 05-08-2008, 03:45 PM

I'm trying to untar a particular directory from a tar.gz file

The command I'm using is tar xzfC file.tar.gz /stuff dir1/dir2/*

It works, but I end up with a nested directory: /stuff/dir1/dir2/files here

How can I make it so it unpacks the files directly into /stuff/ and not into /stuff/dir1/dir2..? Is it even possible?

viron · 05-08-2008, 04:38 PM

You can't.

alan_ri · 05-08-2008, 04:41 PM

Maybe something like this will do

Code:

tar -C /stuff -zxvf yourfile.tar.gz

colucix · 05-08-2008, 05:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by viron

You can't.

You sure?

Code:

tar --strip-components=2 -C /stuff -zxvf file.tar.gz dir1/dir2/

nyheat · 05-08-2008, 09:02 PM

Thanks colucix!

Do you guys know if it's possible to do it the other way around as well?

I'd like to create a tar from the /dir/dir/* files, but it's recreating the /dir/dir directories within the tar, all I want is the files.

colucix · 05-09-2008, 09:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nyheat

Do you guys know if it's possible to do it the other way around as well?

I'd like to create a tar from the /dir/dir/* files, but it's recreating the /dir/dir directories within the tar, all I want is the files.

What is the exact command you tried? Anyway, I think there is no need of such an option, since once you've extracted files in the directory /stuff you can simply do

Code:

tar -C /stuff -zcvf new_archive.tar.gz *

If you want to do the same in one step, you need tar version >= 1.15.91 and use the --show-transformed-names option, piping the output of the tar command to another tar command, as in

Code:

tar --strip-components=2 --show-transformed-names -C /stuff -zxvf file.tar.gz dir1/dir2/ | tar -C /stuff -T - -zcvf new_archive.tar.gz

However, my advice is: keep it simple!