Syntax
Typical Unix tar syntax:
tar -xf file.name.tar -C /path/to/directory
GNU/tar syntax:
tar xf file.tar -C /path/to/directory
tar xf file.tar --directory /path/to/directory
Example: Extract files to another directory
In this example, I’m extracting $HOME/etc.backup.tar file to a directory called /tmp/data. First, you have to create the directory manually, enter:
mkdir /tmp/data
To extract a tar archive $HOME/etc.backup.tar into a /tmp/data, enter:
tar -xf $HOME/etc.backup.tar -C /tmp/data
To see a progress pass the -v option:
tar -xvf $HOME/etc.backup.tar -C /tmp/data You can extract specific files too use:
tar -xvf $HOME/etc.backup.tar file1 file2 file3 dir1 -C /tmp/data
To extract a foo.tar.gz (.tgz extension file) tarball to /tmp/bar, enter:
mkdir /tmp/bar tar -zxvf foo.tar.gz -C /tmp/bar
To extract a foo.tar.bz2 (.tbz, .tbz2 & .tb2 extension file) tarball to /tmp/bar, enter:
mkdir /tmp/bar tar -jxvf foo.tar.bz2 -C /tmp/bar
