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% File src/library/utils/man/untar.Rd
% Part of the R package, http://www.R-project.org
% Copyright 2009-13 R Core Team
% Distributed under GPL 2 or later

\name{untar}
\alias{untar}
\title{
  Extract or List Tar Archives
}
\description{
  Extract files from or list a tar archive.
}
\usage{
untar(tarfile, files = NULL, list = FALSE, exdir = ".",
      compressed = NA, extras = NULL, verbose = FALSE,
      tar = Sys.getenv("TAR"))
}
\arguments{
  \item{tarfile}{The pathname of the tar file: tilde expansion (see
    \code{\link{path.expand}}) will be performed.  Alternatively, a
    \link{connection} that can be used for binary reads.}

  \item{files}{A character vector of recorded filepaths to be extracted:
    the default is to extract all files.}

  \item{list}{If \code{TRUE}, list the files (the equivalent of
    \command{tar -tf}).  Otherwise extract the files (the equivalent of
    \command{tar -xf}).}

  \item{exdir}{The directory to extract files to (the equivalent of
    \command{tar -C}).  It will be created if necessary.}

  \item{compressed}{logical or character.  Values \code{"gzip"},
    \code{"bzip2"} and \code{"xz"} select that form of compression (and
    may be abbreviated to the first letter).  \code{TRUE} indicates gzip
    compression, \code{FALSE} no known compression (but an external
    \command{tar} command may detect compression automagically), and
    \code{NA} (the default) that the type is inferred from the file
    header.}

  \item{extras}{\code{NULL} or a character string: further command-line
    flags such as \option{-p} to be passed to an external \command{tar}
    program.}

  \item{verbose}{logical: if true echo the command used.}

  \item{tar}{character string: the path to the command to be used.  If
    the command itself contains spaces it needs to be quoted -- but
    \code{tar} can also contain flags separated from the command by spaces.}
}

\details{
  This is either a wrapper for a \command{tar} command or for an
  internal implementation written in \R.  The latter is used if
  \code{tarfile} is a connection or if the argument \code{tar} is
  \code{"internal"} or \code{""} (except on Windows, when
  \command{tar.exe} is tried first).

  What options are supported will depend on the \command{tar} used.
  Modern GNU flavours of \command{tar} will support compressed archives,
  and since 1.15 are able to detect the type of compression
  automatically: version 1.20 added support for \command{lzma} and
  version 1.22 for \command{xz} compression using LZMA2.  Mac OS 10.6
  and later (and FreeBSD and some other OSes) have a \command{tar} also
  known as \command{bsdtar} from the \samp{libarchive} project used by
  Mac OS 10.6 and later which can also detect \command{gzip} and
  \command{bzip2} compression automatically.  For other flavours of
  \command{tar}, environment variable \env{R_GZIPCMD} gives the command
  to decompress \command{gzip} and \command{compress} files, and
  \command{R_BZIPCMD} for \command{bzip2} files.

  Arguments \code{compressed}, \code{extras} and \code{verbose} are only
  used when an external \command{tar} is used.

  The internal implementation restores symbolic links as links on a
  Unix-alike, and as file copies on Windows (which works only for
  existing files, not for directories), and hard links as links.  If the
  linking operation fails (as it may on a FAT file system), a file copy
  is tried.  Since it uses \code{\link{gzfile}} to read a file it can
  handle files compressed by any of the methods that function can
  handle: at least \command{compress}, \command{gzip}, \command{bzip2}
  and \command{xz} compression, and some types of \command{lzma}
  compression.  It does not guard against restoring absolute file paths,
  as some \command{tar} implementations do.  It will create the parent
  directories for directories or files in the archive if necessary.  It
  handles the standard (USTAR/POSIX), GNU and \command{pax} ways of
  handling file paths of more than 100 bytes, and the GNU way of
  handling link targets of more than 100 bytes.

  You may see warnings from the internal implementation such
  as \preformatted{    unsupported entry type 'x'}
  This often indicates an invalid archive: entry types \code{"A-Z"} are
  allowed as extensions, but other types are reserved.  The only thing
  you can do with such an archive is to find a \code{tar} program that
  handles it, and look carefully at the resulting files.  There may also
  be the warning \preformatted{    using pax extended headers}
  This is indicates that additional information may have been discarded,
  such as ACLs, encodings \dots, and long path and link names are only
  used as from \R 2.15.3.

  The standards only support ASCII filenames (indeed, only alphanumeric
  plus period, underscore and hyphen).  \code{untar} makes no attempt to map
  filenames to those acceptable on the current system, and treats the
  filenames in the archive as applicable without any re-encoding in the
  current locale.
}

\value{
  If \code{list = TRUE}, a character vector of (relative or absolute)
  paths of files contained in the tar archive.

  Otherwise the return code from \code{\link{system}}, invisibly.
}

\seealso{
  \code{\link{tar}}, \code{\link{unzip}}.
}

\keyword{file}
\keyword{utilities}