How to extract only files without creating directory paths from tar.gz file

tar

I have a tar.gz file from which I have to extract only the files in current directory without creating the whole structure.

For example:

tar.gz contains below files,

/u01/app/oracle/file1
..
..
/u01/app/oracle/file10
/u01/testdata/file1
..
..
/u01/testdata/file5

the tar.gz is present in /u02. So when extracting I want file1 through file10 coming under /u02 instead, the whole directory structure is getting created under /u02

Best Answer

Since you seem to have a fixed number of path components, pass --strip-components=3 to tar to remove /u01/app/oracle while extracting to /u02

For a variable number of components, use the --transform flag instead. Something along the lines of --transform='s,^$[^/][^/]*/$\+,,'

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Tar – How to List Files Only with Tar

I don't see a way to do it from the man page, but you can always filter the results. The following assumes no newlines in your file names:

tar tzf your_archive | awk -F/ '{ if($NF != "") print $NF }'

How it works

By setting the field separator to /, the last field awk knows about ($NF) is either the file name if it's processing a file name or empty if it's processing a directory name (tar adds a trailing slash to directory names). So, we're basically telling awk to print the last field if it's not empty.

Tar compression without directory structure

I think you can do this with the -C option.

From the tar man page:

-C directory, --cd directory, --directory directory
    In c and r mode, this changes the directory before adding the following files.
    In x mode, change directories after opening the archive but before extracting
    entries from the archive.

This means that you should be able to run

tar cvzf result.tar.gz -C /path/to/dir1/ . -C /path/to/dir2/ .

to achieve what you want.

Best Answer

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Tar compression without directory structure

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