I am new to linux and I am trying the following:

I have directory data. In this directory there are x files that end with *.tgz. I want to unpack each, and store the output in a new folder. So as an example. I start with:

ls data

folder_a.tgz    folder_b.tgz    folder_c.tgz

I want want to end up with:

ls /data/test/
folder_a    folder_b    folder_c

I have tried the following:

ls *.tgz | xargs -n1 tar zxvf -C /data/test/

Which gives the error:

-C cannot open: no such file or directory

I do not understand why this does not work, since these both work as expected:

tar zxvf folder_a.tgz -C /data/test/
ls *.tgz | xargs -n1 tar zxvf

But combining these does not work. Can anyone help me to achieve the goal, and maybe explain why my solution does not work?

CodePudding user response：

Your problem is that xargs puts the argument at the end, but tar requires the filename after the f flag. The following should work:

ls *.tgz | xargs -n1 tar zxv -C /data/test/ -f

But maybe just using a loop will be the better solution here:

for ARCHIVE in *.tgz; do tar xvzf "$ARCHIVE" -C /data/test; done

or alternatively:

ls *.tgz | while read ARCHIVE; do tar xvzf "$ARCHIVE" -C /data/test; done