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GNU tar

Writing to Standard Output

To write the extracted files to the standard output, instead of creating the files on the file system, use --to-stdout (-O) in conjunction with --extract (--get, -x). This option is useful if you are extracting files to send them through a pipe, and do not need to preserve them in the file system. If you extract multiple members, they appear on standard output concatenated, in the order they are found in the archive.

--to-stdout

-O

Writes files to the standard output. Used in conjunction with --extract (--get, -x). Extract files to standard output. When this option is used, instead of creating the files specified, tar writes the contents of the files extracted to its standard output. This may be useful if you are only extracting the files in order to send them through a pipe. This option is meaningless with --list (-t).

@quote-arg {Why would you want to do such a thing, how are files separated on the standard output? is this useful with more that one file? Are pipes the real reason?}