How to extract files from a tar file without creating the directories?

UNIX Solaris
1

Hello all.

I have a tar file that contains a number of files that are stored in different directories.

If I extract this tar file with -xvf , the directories get created.

Is there a way to extract all of the files into one directory without creating the directories stored in the tar file.

2

Not really - that is the builtin behavior of tar.

Try this on /var/tmp or /tmp or your home directory (be sure there is disk space beforehand)

cd /tmp
mkdir junk
cd junk
tar xvf mytarball.tar
cd ..
export DEST=/real/path/to/files
find junk -type -f  |
while read fname
do
     bn=$(basename $fname)
     mv $fname ${DEST}/${fn}
done 
rm -r ./junk
3

If all the files are at the same tree depth (I mean, they all are in the same number of directories), you can use gtar with the --strip-path or --strip-components modifier.

Let's assume, your files pathnames are like these:

a/b/x
a/b/y
a/b/z
a/c/1
a/c/2
a/c/3

you can do

gtar xvf archive.tar --strip-components=2

and then you get all six files in the current directory.

If the tree depth is variable, I am not aware of any tar option you could use to extract the files the way you want.

4

--strip-components is not a Solaris tar option, it is for gnu tar.

You can get gtar at Blastwave.org - An OpenSolaris Community Site

You have to setup pkgutil first, then

 pkgutil -yi gtar
5

GNU tar has the option --transform , but I don't fully understand how it works.
May be something like this:

tar --transform 's#.*/\([^/]*\)$#\1#' -xvf <filename>
6

Right, as I said, gtar.

gtar is also part of Solaris 10 as /usr/sfw/bin/gtar.

---------- Post updated at 14:03 ---------- Previous update was at 13:56 ----------

Ah, interesting new switch! OpenSolaris' gtar supports this option too, as I just found out. A shorter way would be

gtar --transform 's/.*\///' -xvf <filename>

Unfortunately, the directories in the tar file get restored this way too.

7

Thanks for all of the replies.

Perhaps this problem can be approached from a different angle.

Is there a way to use the cp command on solaris to take all of the files in the directories, and to copy them all to one directory?

8

Assuming no embedded newlines in the filenames:

find . -type f | 
  xargs -I{}  cp -- {} <dest_dir>

---------- Post updated at 02:51 PM ---------- Previous update was at 02:49 PM ----------

Yep,
or even shorter:

's .*/  '
9

ok - the cp script works. Job done. Cheers all!

10

I'm a little late on that one but for the record Solaris has been including pax for ages. This archiver handles tar files and has a substitution option too:
eg:

pax -r -s '/.*\///' -f file.tar
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