All commands tested on Mac OS Monterey / Jul 02, 2024

How to extract files of a specific filetype from a tar archive

Extract *.png files from the files.tar archive.

You can use this short tar command.

              
                  tar -xvf files.tar --include '*.png'

Or this more verbose tar command.

              
                  tar --extract --verbose --file files.tar --include '*.png'

Note: The required directories will be extracted also.

Options explained

-x or --extract tells tar to extract an existing archive
v or --verbosetells tar to produce verbose output
f or --filetells tar that the next parameter will be the tar file to create, extract, append to, list, etc.
--include tells tar to process files or directories that match the specified pattern