Tar (and other?) blocking question

[Larry W. Virden]

Is there a way that a program could look at a file produced by tar and
determine what blocking factor was used?  I occasionally get tapes, disks,
etc from folks who either forget to specify what they used or who 'use
the default' which apparently isnt the default on any systems that I use.
Then i get checksum errors, etc. attempting to untar the file.

Why doesnt tar have the blocking info in it so that someone extracting the
files doesnt even CARE what blocking factor was used to create it - it
could just use that info if present, otherwise use whatever is specified
on the comand line or as its default...

Does cpio, afio, pdtar, etc. all have this 'feature'?  I assume that
it must be because of tradition and NOT because of some nifty benefit
that one must know what blocking was used at creation to be able to get
files from a tar file...

-- 
Larry W. Virden	 75046,606 (CIS)
674 Falls Place, Reynoldsburg, OH 43068 (614) 864-8817
osu-cis!n8emr!lwv (UUCP) osu-cis!n8emr!lwv at TUT.CIS.OHIO-STATE.EDU (INTERNET)
The world's not inherited from our parents, but borrowed from our children.