Extract without First Directory
Last updated: Jan 6, 2009Whenever I download something that is compressed on the Internet in a .zip, .rar or .tar.gz it is always a crapshot whether or not it contains a “container directory”. A “container directory” is a directory that contains all the other files usually with the same name as the compressed file.
For example the Zend Framework when downloaded contains a folder called, ‘ZendFramework-1.7.2’. All the other files are contained under this folder. This is great but sometimes I want to extract the contents of the folder without the “container folder”.
This is how I used to extract the contents and remove the “container folder”:
tar -xvf ZendFramework-1.7.2.tar.gz
Get rid of the tarball…
rm ZendFramework-1.7.2.tar.gz
cd ZendFramework-1.7.2/
Which would result in:
Copy everything in the “container” folder and move it up a directory.
cp -rf * ../
Now I have found a better way…
A better way
The flag that I have learned is the strip flag. This will strip off the first directory and extract the rest.
tar -xvf ZendFramework-1.7.2.tar.gz --strip 1
The only thing now is… How do I tell if a tar contains a “container folder”?
Easy
tar -tf ZendFramework-1.7.2.tar.gz | head
This will list contents of the file ‘ZendFramework-1.7.2.tar.gz’ showing only the first few lines.
What do you think? Is there an even better way?
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