[Tutor] How to read content in a tar file with tarfile module

[Carlos Hanson]

On Tue, October 10, 2006 11:15 am, Magnus Wirström wrote:
> Hi everyone
>
> I have written a app that makes a tar file and all works well... Now
> i want to expand that app so it can read read the tar and give me the
>  contents of the tar file. How is the best way to do this ? I can't
> find a "listdir" like function in tarfile. Can anyone point me in the
> right direction? Thanks Magnus

There are two choices depending on your needs.  First is the list()
method of a TarFile object:

>>> from tarfile import TarFile
>>> tar = TarFile('files.tar')
>>> tar.list()
-rw-r--r-- chanson/chanson          0 2006-10-10 11:31:08 file.1
-rw-r--r-- chanson/chanson          0 2006-10-10 11:31:11 file.2
-rw-r--r-- chanson/chanson          0 2006-10-10 11:31:15 file.3

The second option is the getmembers() method which returns TarInfo
objects:

>>> members = tar.getmembers()
>>> for member in members:
...     print member.name
...
file.1
file.2
file.3
>>> for member in members:
...     print "%s %s/%s\t%s %s %s" % (
...             member.mode, member.uname, member.gname,
...             member.size, member.mtime, member.name)
...
420 chanson/chanson     0 1160505068 file.1
420 chanson/chanson     0 1160505071 file.2
420 chanson/chanson     0 1160505075 file.3


-- 
Carlos Hanson
Web and System Administrator
Tigard-Tualatin School District
503.431.4053