Show tar.gz files but tar.gz is already inside a tar file

Question

I want to see a tar.gz files that are inside a tar file.

So I have a tar file that has a tar.gz file inside and I want to see the tar.gz files without extraction my tar and my tar.gz.

So to explain more, inside my tar I have a tar.gz, File.tar -> File.tar.gz. so I need to see the files inside my tar.gz but my tar.gz is already inside my tar, and that without extracting my tar and also my tar.gz.

I tried this but doesn't work : tar -xvf File.tar File2.tar.gz | gtar -ztvf -

Can you help me with this?

Answer 1

You'll need to run tar -tf /path/to/file.tar.gz, or tar -tzf /path/to/file.tar.gz.

As far as I've seen, you should avoid using -tf, and prefer -tzf: at least on BSD systems, forgetting the z gives:

tar: input compressed with gzip; use the -z option to decompress it

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Following up on your comment, say you want to list the content of an archive inside an archive, ... Try this:

tar -zxOf /path/to/parent/archive.tar.gz path/to/packed/archive.tar.gz | tar -ztf -

With path/to/packed/archive.tar.gz, the path of your archive inside /path/to/parent/archive.tar.gz.

Answer 2

There are many solutions you can use the command

tar -tvf filename.tar.gz

You can also use vim

vim filename.tar.gz

Answer 3

vim fnm.tar.gz or vim flnm.tgz tar -tvzf fnm.tar.gz or tar -tvzf flnm.tgz

Both of these will help display the contents in the file. If you have a tar file inside of another tar file then thats a bit tricky.

Answer 4

_ for 1 level of taring _

a portable solution to uncompress 'on the fly' and then have tar display the content:

gzip -dc - <file.tar.gz | tar tvf -

this is the pendant of the compression on the fly:

tar cf -  files and dirs | gzip -c - >newcompressedtarfile.tar.gz

(of course, with a recent (and usually GNU variant) tar you can just: tar tzvf file.tar ... but the way above is portable, and can be generalised to many other scenarios (find infos inside files without ungzipping them first, etc)

_ for you case: list the content of a .tar.gz that is inside a .tar _

You will probably need the GNU version of tar and use the --to-stdout (or Capital O, -O) optino to uncompress a file to stdout instead of creating it on disk:

# let's say Archive.tar contains file.tar.gz, 
{and you want the content of the latter without writing any files on disk

tar -xOf  archive.tar  file.tar.gz | gzip -dc - | tar tvf -

Answer 5

Gnu tar has "--to-command'

tar xzf tarfile1.tar.gz pathto/tarfile2.tar.gz --to-command='tar tvzf -'

Anyway "-O" also works for you :

tar xzf tarfile1.tar.gz pathto/tarfile2.tar.gz -O | tar tvzf -