When you extract a tar
archive, by default the files and directories will be extracted to the current working directory. If you want to extract them to a different directory, it is possible to use the -C
(or --directory
) option:
tar xvf archive.tar -C /path/to/target/directory
Note: The target directory must exist. tar
will not create it for you.
If the tarball already contains a directory (all files and subdirectories are stored in a general directory), then it is possible to add the --strip-components <count>
option to extract the content at the desired location without having to move them afterwards:
tar xvf archive.tar -C /path/to/target/directory --strip-components 1