How to estimate the extracted size of a tar.gz file without extracting it in PowerShell 7 (Windows 11)?

Question

I have a tar.gz file that is about 1.39GB. I want to estimate the unzipped size before I actually extract it to avoid filling up my disk. This is for my work and I can only use my work PC (Windows 11) for it. I'm using PowerShell 7. What is the command to accomplish this?

I found many answers under unix/linux, like this one.

I guess in unix/linux, the solve is tar -cz data_dir | wc -c

But what is the equivalent in PowerShell 7 (Windows 11)?

Answer 1

You can use the built-in tar.exe to list the content of your gzip archive:

tar.exe -t -v -f test.tar.gz

You can then parse the output and add up the sizes:

$tarOutput = tar.exe -t -v -f test.tar.gz
$size = ($tarOutput | %{(-split $_)[4]} | Measure-Object -Sum).Sum
$size