Extracting a JAR File's Contents

The basic command to use for extracting the contents of a JAR file is:

jar xf jar-file

• The x option indicates that you want to extract files from the JAR archive.
• The f options indicates that the JAR file from which files are to be extracted is specified on the command line.
• The jar-file argument is the filename (or path and filename) of the JAR file from which to extract files.

The order in which the x and f options appear in the command doesn't matter, but there must not be a space between them.

• When extracting files, the Jar tool copies the desired files to the current directory, reproducing the directory structure that the files have in the archive

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Caution: When it extracts files, the Jar tool overwrites existing files having the same pathname as the extracted files.

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Example

• Extract the files from the TicTacToe JAR file created in the previous section.
  
• The contents of TicTacToe.jar are:

META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
TicTacToe.class
audio/
audio/beep.au
audio/ding.au
audio/return.au
audio/yahoo1.au
audio/yahoo2.au
images/
images/cross.gif
images/not.gif

Use this command:

jar xf TicTacToe.jar

The original TicTacToe JAR file remains unchanged.