ptargrep

Apply pattern matching to the contents of files in a tar archive

TLDR

Search for a pattern and extract matching files

$ ptargrep "[pattern]" [archive.tar.gz]

List matching file paths without extracting

$ ptargrep --list-only "[pattern]" [archive.tar]

Case-insensitive search

$ ptargrep -i "[pattern]" [archive.tar.gz]

Extract matching files using basename only (ignore directory paths)

$ ptargrep --basename "[pattern]" [archive.tar]

Search multiple archives with verbose output

$ ptargrep -v "[pattern]" [archive1.tar.gz] [archive2.tar.bz2]

SYNOPSIS

ptargrep [options] pattern tar-file ...

ptargrep allows you to apply pattern matching to the contents of files in a tar archive. The pattern is used as a Perl regular expression.The default behavior is to extract each matching file from the archive. Use --list-only to only print pathnames of matching files instead.Compressed archives (gzip, bzip2, xz) are handled automatically based on the file extension.Multiple tar archive filenames can be specified and they will each be processed in turn.

PARAMETERS

-b, --basename

When extracting matching files, ignore the directory path from the archive and write to the current directory using only the basename. Files with identical names will overwrite each other.

-i, --ignore-case

Case-insensitive pattern matching.

-l, --list-only

Print the pathname of each matching file to stdout instead of extracting.

-v, --verbose

Log debugging info to stderr.

-?, --help

Display help documentation.

INSTALL

sudo apt install perl

sudo dnf install perl

sudo pacman -S perl

sudo apk add perl-utils

sudo zypper install perl

brew install perl

nix profile install nixpkgs#perl

CAVEATS

Part of the Perl distribution (Archive::Tar module). Large archives may be slow to process. Memory usage can be high with large files since file contents are read into memory.

HISTORY

ptargrep is distributed with Perl's Archive::Tar module. It provides grep-like functionality for archived content.