How do I unzip a tar gz archive to a specific destination?

Question

I want to unpack a .tar.gz file to a specific directory.

The archive file is in /root/Documents. I want to unzip it into /root/Desktop/folder. The folder structure in zipped file should be preserved in the destination directory.

Solution

You have two choices:

cd /root/Desktop/folder
tar xf /root/Documents/file.tar.gz

or

tar xf file.tar.gz -C /root/Desktop/folder

Comments

[Omar Malas]

thanks, how about gzip -dc archive.tar.gz | tar -xf - -C /destination ?

[AlikElzin-kilaka]

what -C stands for?

[tachomi]

@AlikElzin-kilaka From man tar -C, --directory DIR change to directory DIR

[vladkras]

tar -xvjf foo.tar.bz2 for those who are looking for bz2 like me

[Patches]

You actually don't have to specify the compression format anymore with modern tar. I edited the answer so it will work with bz2, xz, and whatever else you want to throw at it.

[Zoe stands with Ukraine]

Both of these seem to require manually creating a directory first though :/ (Not that it's hard, it's just an annoying extra command I don't wanna have to do). oh well

[Patches]

@Zoe tar -xf foobar-1.2.tgz -C /opt --one-top-level=foobar unix.stackexchange.com/a/478341/5164