Extract a specific folder to specific directory from a tar.gz

Question

I have searched and found how to the two portions of what I want but nothing that would allow you to do it in whole....

What I would like to do is extract a specific folder from a tar.gz to another folder in a different path that how it is in the tar.gz.

For example:

• Directory path in my backup.tar.gz file is: a/b/c/d (d is my main with many others inside)

• I want to unpack directory 'd' into 'm' inside this different server path: a/b/m

• If I attempt this code: tar -xzf backup.tar.gz -C a/b/m

** The folder structure looks like: a/b/m/a/b/c/d but I would like it to look like a/b/m+d so that all my main files/folders in the archived 'd' path ends up in the 'm' path

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Ok I figured it out!

Basically I can just use the strip command to remove the x number of leading directories. In this case, my command would look like this:

tar -xzf backup.tar.gz --strip-components=3 -C a/b/m

That removed the first three path directories from my archive (backup.tar.gz : a/b/c/d) before extracting it to the desctination directory.

Now it looks like this: a/b/m+d