If you are looking to remove or adding files to existing tar archive, here are some useful steps we recommend for implementing the changes.

1) How to remove a single file from tar file

We need to create a tar file, for that first we need to touch some files

# touch  textfile{1..4}.txt

Now we can create tar file using tar command

# tar -cvf nixtree.tar textfile{1..4}.txt

Which creates the tar file “nixtree.tar” with the files file1.txt to file4.txt
To test the files in a tar file you can use “-t” switch with tar command.

# tar -tf nixtree.tar
textfile1.txt
textfile2.txt
textfile3.txt
textfile4.txt

We can use the “–delete” switch with tar command to remove files from already created tar file.

# tar --delete -f nixtree.tar  textfile1.txt

This command will remove “textfile1.txt” from the tar archive “nixtree.tar”

now see that tar file again

# tar -tf nixtree.tar
textfile2.txt
textfile3.txt
textfile4.txt

Also we can remove file from tar file using pattern matching .see below

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2) Pattern match – Removing files using “–wildcards” options

# tar --wildcards --delete -f nixtree.tar 'textfile*'

This will remove all files starting with textfile. Which means the above tar file will be empty

3) Adding a file or directory to the existing tar file

You can add a file to a existing tar file  with ‘r’ option

# tar -rvf nixtree.tar newfile.txt

4) Adding directory to the existing tar file also the same

# tar -rvf nixtree.tar /new-directory

5) Extracting specific files  and directory from tar file

You can now extract the file  ‘textfile4.txt’ from the archive file ‘nixtree.tar’ like this:

# tar --extract --file=nixtree.tar  textfile4.txt

6) Extract a directory  from nixtree.tar:

# tar --extract --file=nixtree.tar directoryname

7) Compressing a folder (tar) without its containing directory in the foldername

# tar -zcvf nixtree.tar.gz -C /path/to/foldername_tocompress

8) Untar tar file to specific location

# tar -xvf nixtree.tar -C /path/to/untar/files/to/specific/directory

Tar Usage and Options

c – create a archive file.
x – extract a archive file.
v – show the progress of archive file.
f – filename of archive file.
t – viewing content of archive file.
r – append or update files or directories to existing archive file.
wildcards – Specify pattern in unix tar command.

We hope this helps you in understanding the ways to remove and add files to the existing tar archive.

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