.tar.gz files are made by the combination of TAR packaging followed by a GNU zip (gzip) compression. These files are commonly used in Unix/Linux based system as packages or installers. In order to read or extract these files, we have to first decompress these files and after that expand them with the TAR utilities as these files contain both .tar and .gz files.
In order to extract or un-compress “.tar.gz” files using python, we have to use the tarfile module in python. This module can read and write .tar files including .gz, .bz compression methods.
Approach
- Import module
- Open .tar.gz file
- Extract file in a specific folder
- Close file
File in use
Name: gfg.tar.gz
Link to download this file: Click here
Contents:
“gfg.tar.gz” file
Example:
Python3
# importing the "tarfile" moduleimport tarfile # open filefile = tarfile.open('gfg.tar.gz') # extracting filefile.extractall('./Destination_FolderName') file.close() |
Output:
A folder named “Destination_Folder” is created.
Files are uncompressed inside the “Destination_Folder”
Example: Printing file names before extracting
Python3
# importing the "tarfile" moduleimport tarfile # open filefile = tarfile.open('gfg.tar.gz') # print file namesprint(file.getnames()) # extract filesfile.extractall('./Destination_FolderName') # close filefile.close() |
Output:
Example : Extract a specific file
Python3
# importing the "tarfile" moduleimport tarfile # open filefile = tarfile.open('gfg.tar.gz') # extracting a specific filefile.extract('sample.txt', './Destination_FolderName') file.close() |
Output:
A new folder named “Destination_FolderName” is created
‘sample.txt’ is uncompressed inside the “Destination_FolderName”
