This is a very small untar (TAR archive reader) utility written in C. It's meant to be embedded within code. I wrote this because the only other option seemed to be zlib, which was overkill. There are no library dependencies other than the "math" library (for some standard math calls).

How it Works

You pass three callbacks to the read_tar() routine:

Header callback

Receives a header struct, and an entry index. 

Identifies the beginning of a file. This callback is always invoked before 
the other two.

Data callback

Receives a header struct, entry index, a block of data, and the length of 
the block.

Called one or more times for each block of data. This callback is always
invoked after the header callback, and before the end callback.

End callback:

Receives a header struct, and an entry index.

This callback is always invoked after all of the data for an entry has been
reported.

Running the Example

1. Run 'make'.
2. Run 'build/untar '

The example will expand all normal (non-links, non-special, non-directory..) entries into /tmp. It will not create directories, so you'll have to create the directories mentioned in the "can't write" error messages.

Notes

This utility supports both the primitive and USTAR formats (this should be a majority of the TAR files), but none of the vendor-specific formats that may exist. I wrote it according to the specifications that I had available.

If a TAR file isn't being successfully read, submit a bug and I'll try to adopt it, if there's a simple fix.