How to extract tar file on Windows, when the filenames include a colon

command linecompressiontar

I have a tar(.gz) file created on a Linux system, and the filenames contain colon characters. The tar utilities I can find on Windows don't extract these files at all. How can I do this, ideally from the command-line?

If there's some way to do a filename-translation at the compression end, that would be ok too.

To make it clearer what I mean:

# on linux system
touch example:file
tar cvf test.tar example:file

# copy test.tar to windows system
tar xvf test.tar
... can't create 'example:file': Invalid argument

Best Answer

7-zip extracts tars containing files with names containing colons. It replaces colons with underscores.

7-zip can be used also from command line, e.g.:

"c:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe" x tar_containing_files_with_colons_in_names.tar
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