untar all files in specific directory but not the directory

Question

I think this may be a simple question but cannot find the answer.

I am trying to extract some files from a tar file. These files are in a directory within the tar file. I tried the following however this didnt work

tar -zxvf filename.tar.gz folder/*

I thought this would simply extract all the files in the directory but not the directory itself. The only way I think I could do it currently would be something like this.

tar -zxvf filename.tar.gz folder
mv folder/* ../
rm folder

Hopefully there is a more efficient method to complete this task. Thank you

dsmsk80 · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-15T12:24:16.337

5

With GNU tar, you can use --strip-components option which strips a specified number of leading components from file names before extraction:

tar zxfv filename.tar.gz --strip-components=1
tar zxfv filename.tar.gz folder/ --strip-components=1

edited Aug 15 '13 at 12:24

answered Aug 15 '13 at 12:16

dsmsk80

5,817
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Never would of guessed that. Works perfectly. Thank you :) – dgibbs Aug 16 '13 at 11:21

untar all files in specific directory but not the directory

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