How to list content from a tar file without recursion?

Question

I've a tar (gz, bzip) file and want to see its content, but not recursively.

This is: The "first level" in the file.

I already know how to see content:

tar -ztf file.tar.gz

But it's recursive!!

Thanks!

score 20 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 24 '10 at 21:47

20

tar --exclude='*/*' -tf yourarchive.tar should do it.

That's almost certainly a GNU tar-ism. But who doesn't use GNU tar, right? (Another fun fact: in recent versions of GNU tar, you don't need the 'z' or 'j' to list or uncompress .gz or .bz files -- it autodetects those and it just works.)

answered Nov 24 '10 at 21:47

mattdm

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Easier to understand and remember and plenty fast. – Walf Mar 01 '17 at 02:56
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This is great, but I'll never remember that `-t` means *list*. So `-tf` can be converted to `--list -f`. – SpinUp __ A Davis Oct 18 '17 at 16:24
This option is much faster than the accepted answer, thank you! – Dr_Zaszuś Jan 17 '18 at 08:15
To see the first level of hierarchy I used `tar --exclude='*/*/*' -tf yourarchive.tar` – user3804598 Jul 25 '19 at 14:33

score 11 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 24 '10 at 21:37

11

How about something like:

tar -ztf file.tar.gz | egrep '^[^/]+/?$'

answered Nov 24 '10 at 21:37

dmah

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Slow for large tarballs, but workable – Nicu Stiurca Aug 20 '14 at 21:27

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 24 '10 at 22:05

This should show top-level directories as well as just files that include the dot character:

$ tar -tf app.tar.gz | grep -E '^\w+(\.\w+)*/*\w+(\.\w+)*/?$'

django/
django/django.wsgi
django/search_indexes/
django/templates/
django/app/
django/other-app/

How to list content from a tar file without recursion?

3 Answers3