tar extract to different directory

UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users
1

Hi,

I created a tar file of a directory dir1 from /tmp in the following way

$pwd
/tmp
$tar -cvf dir1.tar dir1 (dir1 will have say file1)

Now i want to extract it in the directory /tmp/dir2 so that the directory dir1 is also created and extracted (/tmp/dir2/dir1/file1). Is there any way without creating the directory first(dir1) the dir1 can be extracted?

Thanks in advance
Ammu

2 
(cd /tmp; tar cf - dir1) | (cd /tmp/dir2; tar xf - )