How to extract files inside a directory from a tar file in terminal?

Question

Hello,

I want to extract only the files inside a folder of a tar file

Example:

Contents of tar file: /home/parent_dir/child_dir/

I want to extract only the files inside child_dir to another directory

Thanks, SB

Answer 1

cd <another_directory>
tar xvf <path_to_tar>/<tarfile>.tar <child_dir>
e.g.
cd <parent_directory>
tar cvf test.tar *
tar tf test.tar
see the folder you wanted. e.g. src/org
cd <some other directory you want to extract to>
tar xvf ..\test.tar src/org
ls
you'll now see the directory you were after from the tar e.g. src/org

Answer 2

The command

tar xf tarfile.tar /home/parent_dir/child_dir

will only extract files in child_dir and its subordinates.

If /home/parent_dir/child_dir is not where you want them to be, GNU tar provides a --transform option that would be used like:

tar  --transform 's,/home/parent_dir/child_dir,foo,' --show-transformed -xf tarfile.tar

which will put the files that would have gone into /home/parent_dir/child_dir into ./foo instead.