Unix tar: do not preserve full pathnames

shell unix tar
user1082754 picture user1082754 · Dec 18, 2012 · Viewed 16.8k times · Source

When I try to compress files and directories with tar using absolute paths, the absolute path is preserved in the resulting compressed file. I need to use absolute paths to tell tar where the folder I wish to compress is located, but I only want it to compress that folder – not the whole path.

For example, tar -cvzf test.tar.gz /home/path/test – where I want to compress the folder test. However, what I actually end up compressing is /home/path/test. Is there anything that can be done to avoid this? I have tried playing with the -C operand to no avail.

Answer

Alessio Valentini picture Alessio Valentini · Sep 19, 2014

This is ugly... but it works...

I had this same problem but with multiple folders, I just wanted to flat every files out. You can use the option "transform" to pass a sed expression and... it works as expected.

this is the expression:

's/.*\///g' (delete everything before '/')

This is the final command:

tar --transform 's/.*\///g' -zcvf tarballName.tgz */*/*.info

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