How to extract files to another directory using 'tar' command?
To extract an archive to a directory different from the current, use the -C
, or --directory
, tar option, as in
tar -xf archive.tar -C /target/directory
Note that the target directory has to exist before running that command (it can be created by mkdir /target/directory
).
Read the manual page (command: man tar
) for other options.
Note that if your tarball already contains a directory name you want to change, add the --strip-components=1
option:
tar xf archive.tar -C /target/directory --strip-components=1
Combining the previous answers and comments:
To simply extract the contents and create target directory if it is missing:
mkdir -p /target/directory && tar xf archive.tar -C /target/directory
To extract and also remove the root(first level) directory in the zip
mkdir -p /target/directory && tar xf archive.tar -C /target/directory --strip-components=1