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Accepted
Avinash Raj
Asked: 2013-12-19 21:46:55 +0800 CST

How can I view the contents of tar.gz file without extracting from the command-line?

  • 772

I want to see the contents (list of files and folders) of an archive, for example a tar.gz file without extracting it.

Are there any methods for doing that?

command-line

11 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Run the below command in the terminal to see the contents of a tar.gz file without extracting it:

    tar -tf filename.tar.gz

    screenshot of listing compressed tarball files in the terminal

    -t, --list
    List the contents of an archive. Arguments are optional. When given, they specify the names of the members to list.

    -f, --file=ARCHIVE Use archive file or device ARCHIVE...

    • 402

  2. You can also use vim 

    vim filename.tar.gz
    • 166

  3. less can also open gz-compressed and uncompressed tar archives. It gives you a lovely ls -l style output too:

    $ less ~/src/compiz_0.9.7.8-0ubuntu1.6.debian.tar.gz
drwxrwxr-x 0/0               0 2012-09-21 11:41 debian/
drwxrwxr-x 0/0               0 2012-08-09 13:32 debian/source/
-rw-rw-r-- 0/0              12 2012-08-09 13:32 debian/source/format
-rw-rw-r-- 0/0              25 2012-08-09 13:32 debian/libdecoration0-dev.docs
-rw-rw-r-- 0/0              25 2012-08-09 13:32 debian/compiz-dev.docs
-rw-rw-r-- 0/0             347 2012-08-09 13:32 debian/compiz-core.install
-rw-rw-r-- 0/0             125 2012-08-09 13:32 debian/libdecoration0-dev.install
...

    And because it's less, you can scroll through it, search it, etc. However it fails miserably with other compression algorithms (in my experience).

    • 50

  4. You could use the z command: zcat, zless, zgrep.

    To view a files content use: 

    zcat file.gz

    To grep something use: 

    zgrep test file.gz

    To check difference between files use: 

    zdiff file1.gz file2.gz

    These are just a few example, there are many more.

    • 44

  5. Well, that depends on the file. Most (de)compression programs have a flag that lists an archive's contents.

    1. tar/tar.gz/tgz/tar.xz/tar.bz2/tbz files

      $ tar tf foo.tgz 
dir1/
dir1/subdir1/
dir1/subdir1/file
dir1/subdir2/
dir1/subdir2/file
dir2/

    2. zip files

      $ zip -sf foo.zip 
Archive contains:
  dir1/
  dir2/
  dir1/subdir1/
  dir1/subdir1/file
  dir1/subdir2/
  dir1/subdir2/file
Total 6 entries (0 bytes)

    3. 7zip files

      $ 7z l foo.7z 

7-Zip [64] 9.20  Copyright (c) 1999-2010 Igor Pavlov  2010-11-18
p7zip Version 9.20 (locale=en_US.utf8,Utf16=on,HugeFiles=on,4 CPUs)

Listing archive: foo.7z

--
Path = foo.7z
Type = 7z
Solid = -
Blocks = 0
Physical Size = 168
Headers Size = 168

   Date      Time    Attr         Size   Compressed  Name
------------------- ----- ------------ ------------  ------------------------
2015-03-30 19:00:07 ....A            0            0  dir1/subdir1/file
2015-03-30 19:00:07 ....A            0            0  dir1/subdir2/file
2015-03-30 19:07:32 D....            0            0  dir2
2015-03-30 19:00:07 D....            0            0  dir1/subdir2
2015-03-30 19:00:07 D....            0            0  dir1/subdir1
2015-03-30 19:00:06 D....            0            0  dir1
------------------- ----- ------------ ------------  ------------------------
                                     0            0  2 files, 4 folders

    4. rar files

       $ rar v foo.rar 

RAR 4.20   Copyright (c) 1993-2012 Alexander Roshal   9 Jun 2012
Trial version             Type RAR -? for help

Archive foo.rar

Pathname/Comment
                  Size   Packed Ratio  Date   Time     Attr      CRC   Meth Ver
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 dir1/subdir1/file
                     0        8   0% 30-03-15 19:00 -rw-r--r-- 00000000 m3b 2.9
 dir1/subdir2/file
                     0        8   0% 30-03-15 19:00 -rw-r--r-- 00000000 m3b 2.9
 dir1/subdir1
                     0        0   0% 30-03-15 19:00 drwxr-xr-x 00000000 m0  2.0
 dir1/subdir2
                     0        0   0% 30-03-15 19:00 drwxr-xr-x 00000000 m0  2.0
 dir1
                     0        0   0% 30-03-15 19:00 drwxr-xr-x 00000000 m0  2.0
 dir2
                     0        0   0% 30-03-15 19:07 drwxr-xr-x 00000000 m0  2.0
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    6                0       16   0%

    That's most of the more popular archive formats. With all this in mind, you could write a little script that uses the appropriate command depending on the extension of the file you give to it:

    #!/usr/bin/env bash

for file in "$@"
do
    printf "\n-----\nArchive '%s'\n-----\n" "$file"
    ## Get the file's extension
    ext=${file##*.}
    ## Special case for compressed tar files. They sometimes
    ## have extensions like tar.bz2 or tar.gz etc.
    [[ "$(basename "$file" ."$ext")" =~ \.tar$ ]] && ext="tgz"

    case $ext in
        7z)
            type 7z >/dev/null 2>&1 && 7z l "$file" || 
            echo "ERROR: no 7z program installed"
            ;;
        tar|tbz|tgz)
            type tar >/dev/null 2>&1 && tar tf "$file"|| 
            echo "ERROR: no tar program installed"
            ;;
        rar)
            type rar >/dev/null 2>&1 && rar v "$file"|| 
            echo "ERROR: no rar program installed"
            ;;
        zip)
            type zip >/dev/null 2>&1 && zip -sf "$file"|| 
            echo "ERROR: no zip program installed"
            ;;
        *)
            echo "Unknown extension: '$ext', skipping..."
            ;;
    esac
done

    Save that script in your PATH and make it executable. You can then list the contents of any archive:

    $ list_archive.sh foo.rar foo.tar.bz foo.tar.gz foo.tbz foo.zip

-----
Archive 'foo.rar'
-----

RAR 4.20   Copyright (c) 1993-2012 Alexander Roshal   9 Jun 2012
Trial version             Type RAR -? for help

Archive foo.rar

Pathname/Comment
                  Size   Packed Ratio  Date   Time     Attr      CRC   Meth Ver
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 dir1/subdir1/file
                     0        8   0% 30-03-15 19:00 -rw-r--r-- 00000000 m3b 2.9
 dir1/file
                     0        8   0% 30-03-15 19:29 -rw-r--r-- 00000000 m3b 2.9
 dir1/subdir1
                     0        0   0% 30-03-15 19:00 drwxr-xr-x 00000000 m0  2.0
 dir1
                     0        0   0% 30-03-15 19:29 drwxr-xr-x 00000000 m0  2.0
 dir2
                     0        0   0% 30-03-15 19:07 drwxr-xr-x 00000000 m0  2.0
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    5                0       16   0%


-----
Archive 'foo.tar.bz'
-----
dir1/
dir1/subdir1/
dir1/subdir1/file
dir1/file
dir2/

-----
Archive 'foo.tar.gz'
-----
dir1/
dir1/subdir1/
dir1/subdir1/file
dir1/file
dir2/

-----
Archive 'foo.tbz'
-----
dir1/
dir1/subdir1/
dir1/subdir1/file
dir1/file
dir2/

-----
Archive 'foo.zip'
-----
Archive contains:
  dir1/
  dir1/subdir1/
  dir1/subdir1/file
  dir1/file
  dir2/
Total 5 entries (0 bytes)

    And since someone mentioned that lesser editor, naturally, emacs can also do this:

    emacs showing an archive's contents

    • 14

  6. tar's -t flag will list contents for you. Add that to your other flags (so -tvfz for a tar.gz, -tvfj for a tar.bz2, etc) and you can browse without extracting. From there you can extract single files quite easily

    tar -xvfz mybackup.tar.gz path/to/file

    The big problem with tar is remembering all the other flags. So I usually rely on 7z (of the p7zip-full package) to do all my archiving. I won't claim it is entirely better but it supports almost everything (without having to specify compression type) and the arguments are logical.

    7z l archive.ext
7z e archive.ext path/to/file

    It's certainly less capable, but you don't need the man page to use it.

    There's also Midnight Commander (mc). This is an all-around badass for quasi-graphical terminal-based file management and with some light testing it just let you browse into both .tar.gz and .7z archives. I'm not sure how many others it supports.

    • 9

  7. Why not use vim to browse your archive and open files (at least text-like files):

    vim archive.tar.gz

    enter image description here

    Press the arrow keys to scroll and Enter to open a file.

    • 7

  8. Midnight Commander (mc) also has a good compressed file viewer, although I consider this a bit of cheating since mc is a file manager, albeit a text-based one.

    Also, if all you want is to see what's inside compressed archives, you could learn the "view" command for each compressor. tar tzvf will show you the contents of a tar file, unzip -l will do it for a zip file, and so on.

    • 5

  9. lesspipe is a shell script installed by default as part of the less package that can list the contents of a tar.gz archive, as well as a range of other common archive file formats.

    $ lesspipe example.tar.gz
drwxrwxr-x ubuntu/ubuntu     0 2018-11-16 05:32 example/
-rw-rw-r-- ubuntu/ubuntu     7 2018-11-16 05:32 example/ask.txt
-rw-rw-r-- ubuntu/ubuntu     7 2018-11-16 05:32 example/ubuntu.txt

    It is called by the less command (see Oli's answer) as an input preprocessor if the $LESSOPEN environment variable is set appropriately.

    If feeling adventurous, take a peak at vi /usr/bin/lesspipe to see what commands it uses. For files matching the tar.gz extension, we can see that it uses tar tzvf under the hood along with the --force-local option to disable an obscure feature of tar that would otherwise confuse colons in the filename with a command to use a remote tape drive:

    *.tar.gz|*.tgz|*.tar.z|*.tar.dz)
        tar tzvf "$1" --force-local

    Note that because it's primarily designed as a preprocessor for less, it won't output anything if it doesn't recognise the file type. I noticed that some .tar.gz files I downloaded wouldn't work because they didn't actually use gzip compression despite the filename.

    • 5

  10. Using view filename.tar.gz will also work. much in the same way vim does, but without write permissions.

    • 3