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Accepted
clarkk
Asked: 2011-11-12 06:58:37 +0800 CST

tar - Remove leading directory components on extraction

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How can you extract only the target dir and not the complete dir tree?

compress

tar cf /var/www_bak/site.tar /var/www/site

extract

tar xf /var/www/site.tar -C /tmp

This will produce:

/tmp/var/www/site

How is it possible to avoid the whole dir tree to be created when the file is extracted?

What I want it to extract to:

/tmp/site
linux tar

2 Answers

  1. You want to use the --strip-components=NUMBER option of tar:

     --strip-components=NUMBER
       strip NUMBER leading components from file names on extraction

    Your command would be:

    tar xfz /var/www/site.gz --strip-components=2 -C /tmp
    • 401
  2. Best Answer

    Why not use -C option when creating:

    $ tar cf /var/www/site.tar -C /var/www_bak/ site
    • 50