~ is expanded by the shell. Don't use ~ with -C:
tar czf ~/files/wp/my-page-order.tar.gz \
-C ~ \
webapps/zers/wp-content/plugins/my-page-order
(tar will include webapps/zers/wp-content/plugins/my-page-order path)
or
tar czf ~/files/wp/my-page-order.tar.gz \
-C ~/webapps/zers/wp-content/plugins \
my-page-order
(tar will include my-page-order path)
Or just cd first....
cd ~/webapps/zers/wp-content/plugins
tar czf ~/files/wp/my-page-order.tar.gz my-page-order
If your pax supports the -0 option, with zsh:
print -rN dir/**/*(D/e:'reply=($REPLY/*(ND^/[1,10]))':) |
pax -w0 | xz > file.tar.xz
It includes the first 10 non-directory files of each directory in the list sorted by file name. You can choose a different sorting order by adding the om glob qualifier (order by modification time, Om to reverse the order), oL (order by length), non (sort by name but numerically)...
If you don't have the standard pax command, or it doesn't support -0 but you have the GNU tar command, you can do:
print -rN -- dir/**/*(D/e:'reply=($REPLY/*(ND^/[1,10]))':) |
tar --null -T - -cjf file.tar.xz
If you can't use zsh, but have access to bash (the shell of the GNU project), you could do:
find dir -type d -exec bash -O nullglob -O dotglob -c '
for dir do
set -- "$dir/*"; n=0
for file do
if [ ! -d "$file" ] || [ -L "$file" ]; then
printf "%s\0" "$file"
(( n++ < 10 )) || break
fi
done
done' bash {} + | pax -0w | xz > file.tar.xz
That would be significantly less efficient though.
Best Answer
Usually
tarneeds the--absolute-namesor--absolute-pathsoption to retain the root'/'part while creating an archive. Even if you force it in that way, the extract skips the leading'/'too.However, if you have an archive with the leading
'/'and you tar does not skip it while extracting, NoahD's answer should work in this form,I think
paxdoes not handle compressed files, so you would need to pipe after decompress intopax.That would go like this (assuming you have a gzipped archive)
I found this wiki page on Google just now.