Linux – untar all files in specific directory but not the directory

linuxtar

I think this may be a simple question but cannot find the answer.

I am trying to extract some files from a tar file. These files are in a directory within the tar file. I tried the following however this didnt work

tar -zxvf filename.tar.gz folder/*

I thought this would simply extract all the files in the directory but not the directory itself. The only way I think I could do it currently would be something like this. 

tar -zxvf filename.tar.gz folder
mv folder/* ../
rm folder

Hopefully there is a more efficient method to complete this task. Thank you

Best Answer

With GNU tar, you can use --strip-components option which strips a specified number of leading components from file names before extraction:

tar zxfv filename.tar.gz --strip-components=1
tar zxfv filename.tar.gz folder/ --strip-components=1
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