Wichert Akkerman added the comment: You could also look for the first matching file and extract that. That way you can at least implement something similar to what standard tar can do: [fog;/tmp]-10> tar tf x.tar docs/ docs/index.rst docs/glossary.rst docs/Makefile docs/conf.py docs/changes.rst [fog;/tmp]-12> cat x.tar| tar xf - docs/index.rst [fog;/tmp]-13> ls docs index.rst ---------- nosy: +wichert _______________________________________ Python tracker <report@bugs.python.org> <http://bugs.python.org/issue10436> _______________________________________