This is a text-only version of the following page on https://raymii.org:
---
Title       : 	Find files in tar archives and extract specific files from tar archives
Author      : 	Remy van Elst
Date        : 	17-10-2018
URL         : 	https://raymii.org/s/snippets/Find_files_in_tar_archives_and_extract_them.html
Format      : 	Markdown/HTML
---



This is a small tip, to find specific files in tar archives and how to extract
those specific files from said archive. Usefull when you have a 2 GB large tar
file with millions of small files, and you need just one.

![][1]

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### Finding files in tar archives

Using the command line flags `-ft` (long flags are `--file --list`) we can list
the contents of an archive. Using `grep` you can search that list for the
correct file. Example:

    
    
    tar -ft large_file.tar.gz | grep "the-filename-you-want"
    

Output:

    
    
    "full-path/to-the-file/in-the-archive/the-filename-you-want"
    

With a modern tar on modern linux you can omit the flags for compressed archives
and just pass a `.tar.gz` or `.tar.bz2` file directly.

### Extracting one file from a tar archive

When extracting a tar archive, you can specify the filename of the file you want
(full path, use the command above to find it), as the second command line
option. Example:

    
    
    tar -xf large_file.tar.gz "full-path/to-the-file/in-the-archive/the-filename-you-want"
    

It might just take a long time, at least for my 2 GB file it took a while.

An alternative is to use "mc" (midnight commander), which can open archive files
just a a local folder.

   [1]: https://raymii.org/s/inc/img/icons/Tar_gz_archive_icon.svg.png
   [2]: https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=7435ae6b8212

---

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