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Does anyone have a command syntax for extracting 1 file from a .tar.gz that also allows me to place the extracted file in a certain directory? I have Googled this and get too many variations with a lot of forum threads stating the syntax doesn't work. Before I venture on I prefer to know the command will work because I do not want to risk overwriting files and directories already present on my server.

HopelessN00b
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H. Ferrence
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2 Answers2

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If you're risking overwriting files in production with uncertain results, you're doing something wrong. Test first.

tar zxvf archive.tar.gz path/to/file/in/archive -C /destination/dir

Warner
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  • +1 if this doesn't work it's not a tar.gz file. – egorgry Apr 08 '10 at 13:40
  • If What egorgry says turns out to be true (it is not a gzip file), see what `file foo.tar.gz` thinks it is... it could be a mislabed bz2 file or something, in which case you would just replace the z argument to tar with j. – Kyle Brandt Apr 08 '10 at 13:42
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    Thanks Warner -- it worked. Although the -C /destination/dir part did not work I got what I needed. The file ended up in a series of directories off the directory where the .tar.gz was located so I did not overwrite anything. (BTW, going in I knew and verified I was working with a .tar.gz. That was not an issue. I was simply looking for trustworthy syntax and I always trust what I get from stackoverflow and serverfault experts!) – H. Ferrence Apr 08 '10 at 13:55
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On Solaris 10 if you have a tar ball called myTarfile.tar and you want to extract only one directory called my_dir from that tar file then below command workes

tar -xvf myTarfile.tar -C my_dir

Bond
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