Download and Extract Tarballs in One Step with Linux

Streamlining File Downloads and Extraction in the Terminal

Frequently, downloaded content arrives as a file archive, commonly in formats like tarballs or zip files. These archives might contain source code for applications not present in the Gentoo Portage repository, documentation for internal business software, or even standard installations like a new WordPress instance.

Traditionally, extracting a downloaded archive within a terminal environment involves a sequence of commands. A typical approach might resemble this:

wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
tar xvzf latest.tar.gz
rm latest.tar.gz

Alternatively, a more concise form can be utilized:

wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz && tar xvzf latest.tar.gz && rm latest.tar.gz

Both methods, however, can be considered somewhat cumbersome. Given the simplicity of this operation, a robust shell such as bash should facilitate a more streamlined process.

Leveraging 'curl' for Efficient Extraction

Fortunately, the 'curl' command provides a solution, enabling the entire process to be completed within a single piped statement:

curl http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz | tar xvz

This approach eliminates the need for temporary files and avoids the use of ampersands, resulting in a highly compact and efficient command.

From a performance perspective, the 'curl' method can potentially be faster. Piping stdout utilizes RAM for buffering, while the traditional wget/tar/rm sequence necessitates direct read/write operations to and from the disk.

Controlling Output Verbosity

The 'tar' command, when used with the '-v' option (as demonstrated in the previous examples), displays each extracted file name to standard output. This output can sometimes interfere with the display of download status provided by 'curl'’s ncurses interface.

To suppress this verbose output, 'tar' can be invoked without the '-v' option:

curl http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz | tar xz

This provides a cleaner, more focused output during the download and extraction process.

In conclusion, utilizing 'curl' in conjunction with 'tar' offers a significantly more efficient and elegant solution for downloading and extracting file archives directly within the terminal.