Syntax

Untarring a file can be done using the following syntax. Typical Unix tar syntax:
tar -xf file.name.tar -C /path/to/directory
GNU/tar Linux syntax:
tar xf file.tar -C /path/to/directory
OR
tar xf file.tar --directory /path/to/directory
Extract .tar.gz archive:
tar -zxf file.tar --directory /path/to/directory
Extract .tar.bz2/.tar.zx archive:
tar -jxf file.tar --directory /path/to/directory
Where,

• x : Extract files
• f : Tar archive name
• --directory : Set directory name to extract files
• -C : Set dir name to extract files
• -j : Work on .tar.gz file format
• -z : Work on .tar.bz2 file format
• -v : Verbose output i.e. show progress on screen

Example: Extract files to another directory

In this example, I’m extracting $HOME/etc.backup.tar file to a directory called /tmp/data. First, you have to create the directory manually, enter:

mkdir /tmp/data

To extract a tar archive $HOME/etc.backup.tar into a /tmp/data, enter:

tar -xf $HOME/etc.backup.tar -C /tmp/data

To see a progress pass the -v option:

tar -xvf $HOME/etc.backup.tar -C /tmp/data

Sample outputs:

Extract only specific files from a tar archive

You can extract specific files too:

## extract only file1, file2, file3
## and dir1 to /tmp/data/ 
tar -xvf $HOME/etc.backup.tar file1 file2 file3 dir1 -C /tmp/data

Extract .tar.gz/.tgz archive to specific folder

To extract a foo.tar.gz (.tgz extension file) tarball to /tmp/bar, enter:

mkdir /tmp/foo
tar -zxvf foo.tar.gz -C /tmp/foo

Extract .tar.bz2/.tbz2/.tb2/.tar.xz archive to specific directory

To extract a foo.tar.bz2 (.tbz, .tbz2 & .tb2 extension file) tarball to /tmp/bar, enter:

mkdir /tmp/bar
tar -jxvf bar.tar.bz2  -C /tmp/bar

Sample outputs:

etc/adduser.conf
etc/apg.conf
etc/appstream.conf
etc/brltty.conf
etc/ca-certificates.conf
etc/debconf.conf
etc/deluser.conf
etc/fuse.conf
etc/fwupd.conf
etc/gai.conf
etc/hdparm.conf
etc/host.conf
etc/kernel-img.conf
etc/kerneloops.conf
etc/ld.so.conf
etc/libao.conf
etc/libaudit.conf
etc/logrotate.conf
etc/ltrace.conf
etc/mke2fs.conf
etc/mtools.conf
etc/nsswitch.conf
etc/pam.conf
etc/pnm2ppa.conf
etc/popularity-contest.conf
etc/resolv.conf
etc/rsyslog.conf
etc/sensors3.conf
etc/sysctl.conf
etc/ucf.conf
etc/updatedb.conf
etc/usb_modeswitch.conf

See tar(1) for more information.