Re: [Bug-tar] Extract a file from a large tar file

[Sergey Poznyakoff]

Hi Paul,

> Presumably an option could be added to 'tar' so that it assumes the
> tar file contains no duplicates, and can run faster in your case.

FWIW, such an option already exists:

      --occurrence[=NUMBER]  process only the NUMBERth occurrence of each file
                             in the archive; this option is valid only in
                             conjunction with one of the subcommands --delete,
                             --diff, --extract or --list and when a list of
                             files is given either on the command line or via
                             the -T option; NUMBER defaults to 1

Perhaps the description is a bit vague, but it will make tar stop after
processing NUMBER occurrencies, which should presumably help in this case.
                             
Regards,
Sergey