Does this example answer your quiestion?

paste this into temp.pl

use Archive::Tar;
use strict;
my $parent = Archive::Tar->new("parent.tar");
my $child_tar = Archive::Tar->new();
$child_tar->add_data("file1",$parent->get_content("file1"));
$child_tar->add_data("file2",$parent->get_content("file2"));
$child_tar->write("child1.tar");
$parent->remove("file1");
$parent->remove("file2");
$parent->write("child2.tar");
[download]

then run

$ echo "contents of file1">file1
$ echo "contents of file2">file2
$ echo "contents of file3">file3
$ echo "contents of file4">file4
$ tar cf parent.tar file?
$ rm -f file?
$ perl temp.pl
$ tar xfv child1.tar
file1
file2
$ cat file?
contents of file1
contents of file2
$ tar xfv child2.tar
file3
file4
$ cat file?
contents of file1
contents of file2
contents of file3
contents of file4
[download]

--

flounder