search tar files

[craig322]

Is there a way to grep through files in a tar file without extracting the files? The tar file resides on disk if that makes any difference.

 

[columb]

try

tar -tf path/to/tarfile.tar | grep file_I_want

Columb Healy

 

[sostek]

May want to do:

tar -tvf path/to/tarfile.tar | grep desired_file

 

[stefanwagner]

I think he is looking for the content of the file, not the filename.

here is a script targrep.sh:

#!/bin/bash
#
# usage: targrep.sh pattern tarfile
#
mkdir /tmp/untar
tar -xf $2 -C /tmp/untar
grep -R $1 /tmp/untar
rm -rf /tmp/untar

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[columb]

If you want to check the contents of a tar file without extracting you can use 'strings'. It won't tell you which file contains the string but it will tell youif it's there.

To test this I tarred up a number of *.c files and then

$ strings bits.tar | grep include
#include <stdio.h>
#include <error.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <math.h>

Columb Healy