Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook - Third Edition

Extracting files and folders from an archive

The -x option extracts the contents of the archive to the current directory:

    $ tar -xf archive.tar

When -x is used, the tar command extracts the contents of the archive to the current directory. The -C option specifies a different directory to receive the extracted files:

    $ tar -xf archive.tar -C /path/to/extraction_directory

The command extracts the contents of an archive to a specified directory. It extracts the entire contents of the archive. We can extract just a few files by specifying them as command arguments:

    $ tar -xvf file.tar file1 file4

The preceding command extracts only file1 and file4, and it ignores other files in the archive.