[ILUG] Extract tar file

[David De La Harpe Golden]

Conor Mac Aoidh wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have a question about extracting a tar file. This is what I have:
> 
> tar xvf filename.tar.bz2 -C /target
> 
> at the moment this creates a new folder and puts the contents in it,
> /target/filename/contents
>

Actually, technically, to clear up a confusion you probably have - the 
entry names *in the tar file itself* likely have a directory prefix 
"filename/" at the start, by convention. You could rename 
filename.tar.bz2 to supermonkey.tar.bz2 and you will find it would still 
expand to filename/contents

You can see this with
tar jtvf filename.tar.bz2

(contrast windoze where the standard - and thoroughly braindead - 
convention is to make entries in .zip files without the directory prefix 
so they infuriatingly expand into a big uncontained mess o' files by 
default)

It is quite possible to create tar archives without a such leading 
prefix in the
entries, but unix and linux folk will generally regard it as 
phenomenally annoying
except in limited circumstances where tar is being used as a filesystem
backup tool.

> how can i tell it to put the contents of the tar directly into that
> folder so they would be here: /target/contents
>

In effect, you want to drop one path component from the tarfile's 
entries. This is, despite my rant, common enough, so gnu tar and most 
unix tars have a "strip" option, in the gnu case:

tar jxvf filename.tar.bz2 -C /target --strip 1