JAR - extracting specific files

java jar extract archive
user3521479 picture user3521479 · Sep 22, 2014 · Viewed 49.1k times · Source

I have .class and .java files in JAR archive. Is there any way to extract only .java files from it? I've tried this command but it doesn't work:

jar xf jar-file.jar *.java

Answer

Anders R. Bystrup picture Anders R. Bystrup · Sep 22, 2014

From the source:

To extract only certain files from a jar file, supply their filenames:

C:\Java> jar xf myFile.jar foo bar

Using wildcards is a shell thing, and you should not expect it to work when extracting from a JAR file (which, as you've realized, is the case).

What you can do, is supply a list of the files you want to extract, via the @ modifier:

jar xf my.jar @myfiles.lst

where myfiles.lst would be:

com/my/MyClass.java
com/my/MySecondClass.java

This file could easily be created automatically with creative use of jar tvf, awk and your desired extraction pattern. I'll leave that as an exercise and/or another SO question :-)

Or you could use unzip - a JAR file is basically a zip-file.

Cheers,

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