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2.3.2 Extracting Files from an Archive

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Creating an archive is only half the job--there would be no point in storing files in an archive if you couldn't retrieve them. To extract files from an archive, use the `--extract' (`-x') operation.

To extract specific files, use their names as file name arguments. If you use a directory name as a file name argument, tar extracts all the files (including subdirectories) in that directory. If you don't use any file name arguments, tar extracts all the files in the archive.

Note: tar will extract an archive member into the file system without checking to see if there is already a file with the archive member's file name. If there is a file with that name, tar will overwrite that file and its contents will be lost.

FIXME: xref keep-old


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