HP-UX - How can I read a text file from tar archive without extracting it?

bash text tar cat hp-ux
Maxbester picture Maxbester · Oct 9, 2012 · Viewed 18.8k times · Source

I have a tar archive which contains several text files. I would like to write a script to display (stdout) the content of a file without extracting it to the current directory.

Actually I would like to do the same as:

tar tf myArchive.tar folder/someFile.txt
cat folder/someFile.txt
rm -R folder

but without the rm...

I tried this way but it didn't work:

tar tf myArchive.tar folder/someFile.txt | cat

Thanks

Answer

Didier Trosset picture Didier Trosset · Oct 9, 2012

Use x to extract, with f from archive file. Then add also option -O to direct extracted files to standard output.

tar xf myArchive.tar folder/someFile.txt -O

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