How do I extract files without folder structure using tar

Question

I have a tar.gz-file with the following structure:

folder1/img.gif
folder2/img2.gif
folder3/img3.gif

I want to extract the image files without

Answer 1

This is almost possible with tar alone, using the --transform flag, except that there's no way to delete the left over directories as far as I can tell.

This will flatten the entire archive:

tar xzf images.tgz --transform='s/.*\///'

The output will be

folder1/
folder2/
folder3/
img.gif
img2.gif
img3.gif

You will then need to delete the directories with another command, unfortunately.