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=0 -+- 2004-02-25:2 -+- UNIX Basics -+- using rpm2cpio to extract files from rpm package without install it -+- slimzhao@21cn.com -+- slimzhao -+-  -+- nolink -+- English -+-  -+- Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0) -+- 6639
rpm use cpio's archive format internally.
<p>
rpm itself can't extract single or bundle of files from a package.
<p>
rpm-XXXX.rpm provide a tool called rpm2cpio
<p>
that's it:<p>
<b>rpm2cpio your_package.rpm | cpio -di '*.doc'</b>
<p>this command extract all files match the pattern '*.doc', it's necessary to use single-quote to protect *. from globbing by shell
<ul>
<li>the pattern to use is for the full path string, not only the real file name, given a file <br>
<b>'./usr/share/pfaedit/pfaedit-es.ui'</b><br>
'*share/pfa*' will match it
<li>never just use <b>'rpm2cpio your_package.rpm'</b> to see what happen, rpm2cpio write the result to stdin, not a file with the same file name and .cpio as suffix, which probably most of you would expect.
<li>always using -d parameter, or it's equivalent: --make-directories
</ul>