Remove directory structure when extracting tar archive - tar

Question

Suppose I have created a tar archive on Server A using tar -czvf subdir.tgz subdirectory/*. If I have a parallel structure on Server B to which I've copied this tarball and I want to now clobber over that same subdirectory - including removing any files in this subdirectory that are not present in the tar archive - I could cd into the parent directory on Server B, rm -rf subdirectory and then tar -xzvf subdir.tgz.
Is there a way to do this without having to first run the rm?
As a test I put a dummy directory inside Server B at subdirectory/dummy/ and then ran tar -xzvf subdir.tgz --recursive-unlink but to my surprise, subdirectory/dummy/ was still there. I guess I misunderstood what --recursive-unlink does.
EDIT ==========
here's an example. I create two directories, which would represent the two "mirrored" directories on two different servers (think of them as server 'a' and server 'b'). In the destination directory ('b') I create an extra dir and some files that will not be present in the tar archive. These I'm expecting to be clobbered and removed. Essentially, all I want in directory 'b' when I'm done is the files from directory 'a'. But, as can be seen from the example, despite --unlink-first and --recursive-unlink the superfluous directory and files are still there after untar.
-bash-3.2$ mkdir tartest
-bash-3.2$ cd tartest
-bash-3.2$ mkdir a
-bash-3.2$ mkdir b
-bash-3.2$ cd a
-bash-3.2$ mkdir xyz
-bash-3.2$ cd xyz
-bash-3.2$ touch test.1
-bash-3.2$ touch test.2
-bash-3.2$ cd ../
-bash-3.2$ touch test.3
-bash-3.2$ cd ../b
-bash-3.2$ mkdir abc
-bash-3.2$ cd abc
-bash-3.2$ touch test.4
-bash-3.2$ cd ../../a
-bash-3.2$ tar cvf ../archive.tar ./*
./test.3
./xyz/
./xyz/test.2
./xyz/test.1
-bash-3.2$ cd ../b
-bash-3.2$ tar -xf ../archive.tar --unlink-first --recursive-unlink
-bash-3.2$ ls
total 16K
drwxr-xr-x 4 iponly168797 iponly168797 4.0K Jan 27 13:58 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 iponly168797 iponly168797 4.0K Jan 27 13:57 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 iponly168797 iponly168797 4.0K Jan 27 13:56 abc
-rw-r--r-- 1 iponly168797 iponly168797 0 Jan 27 13:56 test.3
drwxr-xr-x 2 iponly168797 iponly168797 4.0K Jan 27 13:56 xyz
-bash-3.2$ ls xyz
total 8.0K
drwxr-xr-x 2 iponly168797 iponly168797 4.0K Jan 27 13:56 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 iponly168797 iponly168797 4.0K Jan 27 13:58 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 iponly168797 iponly168797 0 Jan 27 13:56 test.1
-rw-r--r-- 1 iponly168797 iponly168797 0 Jan 27 13:56 test.2

Answer 1

--recursive-unlink removes files and directories only, if it keeps you from extracting the new files. For your purpose, add --unlink-first. With both options, the files and directories not in the new tar will be removed before.
This is how it works for me:
ott#hv:~/tmp/tar $ tar cvf a.tar a
a/
a/test.txt
a/b/
a/c/
a/a/
ott#hv:~/tmp/tar $ cd b
ott#hv:~/tmp/tar/b $ tar xvf ../a.tar
a/
a/test.txt
a/b/
a/c/
a/a/
ott#hv:~/tmp/tar/b $ cd ../a
ott#hv:~/tmp/tar/a $ rmdir b
ott#hv:~/tmp/tar/a $ rm test.txt
rm: reguläre leere Datei »test.txt« entfernen? y
ott#hv:~/tmp/tar/a $ cd ..
ott#hv:~/tmp/tar $ tar cvf a.tar a
a/
a/c/
a/a/
ott#hv:~/tmp/tar $ cd b
ott#hv:~/tmp/tar/b $ tar xvf ../a.tar --unlink-first --recursive-unlink
a/
a/c/
a/a/
ott#hv:~/tmp/tar/b $ ls -lR
.:
insgesamt 8
drwxr-xr-x 4 ott ott 4096 31. Okt 19:21 a
./a:
insgesamt 16
drwxr-xr-x 2 ott ott 4096 28. Okt 21:31 a
drwxr-xr-x 2 ott ott 4096 28. Okt 21:31 c
./a/a:
insgesamt 0
./a/c:
insgesamt 0
ott#hv:~/tmp/tar/b $ tar --version
tar (GNU tar) 1.20
Maybe you have a different tar?