How To Extract a Single File / Directory from Tarball Archive

A. tar command allows to extract a single file or directory using the following format. It works under UNIX, Linux, and BSD operating systems.

tar xvf /dev/st0 filename
tar xvf /dev/st0 directory-name
tar xvf mytar.ball.tar filename
tar -zxvf mytar.ball.tar.gz directory-name

Extract file to /tmp directory
tar -zxvf mytar.ball.tar.gz -C /tmp filename
tar -zxvf mytar.ball.tar.gz -C /tmp dir-name

Read tar man page for more information:
man tar