parse tar file with python

[Shagshag13]

hello,

i 'm not sure this is the right place to ask, but maybe somebody had already do some kind of python code on this :

i had hundred thousand of small files, my program is very slow. I'm thinking that i loose time waiting for opening/closing, and i
think this could be best if i "tar" my files by blocks.

But in this case i don't know how to check for the end of a file and how to get its name (both in a tar archive) ...
(i don't want to tar/untar with python, just to be able to do a sequential reading of a tar file to get its content)

do you have an idea ?

thanks in advance,

s13.