Question

I wonder how to list the content in an archive file and remove some directories from it?

For example, I have an archive file data.tar.

1. I would like to list its content without extracting it. Is it possible to control the level of directory for viewing? I mean not necessarily every files, but just down to some level of the path.

2. I also would like to remove some directories matching "*/count1000" from it.

Answer 1

to see the contents of the tar file,

tar tvf mytar.tar

to extract a file,

tar xvf mytar.tar myfile.txt

to delete a file

tar -f mytar.tar --delete */count1000