How to merge file when unarchive the tarball?

Question

I downloaded a tarball(abc.tar.gz) which has a root folder(abc) and multiple subfolders(a, b, c, etc). And I have a folder called Target in machine(macbook pro), with multiple subfolders(a, b, c, etc) either.
Now I want to unarchive the tarball to Target folder and auto merge the subfolders. How can I achieve it? I've tried to unarchive it in Target but result with a subfolder(abc) in Target:

cp abc.tar.gz ~/Target
cd ~/Target
tar xzvf abc.tar.gz

Result:

Target/abc/a
Target/abc/b
Target/a
Target/b

What I want is:

Target/a    # auto merged
Target/b    # auto merged

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Unfortunately, tar will always unpack the full archived path even when you only request a single resource inside a subfolder path. e.g.:

$ tar -x abc/a -zvf abc.tar.gz 

will unpack only subfolder a but it's parent directory abc will still be created.

From the Target directory you can do

$ for d in `ls abc`; do cp -rf abc/$d/* ./$d/; done

to copy the archive folders into pre-existing, same-name folders in the current folder Target

or simply

$ cp -rf abc/* ./

to create all archive folders in ~/Target. If a folder named, say, 'foo' exists in both abc and Target then the contents of abc/foo will be copied to Target/foo. Be aware, however, that at the file level abc/foo/bar.txt will overwrite Target/foo/bar.txt without notice or warning.