tar format

[Richard Goerwitz]

I looked through the man page on my local system describing the tar
header format, and I cannot figure out how exactly to determine the
byte position of the next header.  Clearly there is a size field,
but the values I get for it seem not to reflect the precise file
length, even taking the preposed header into account.  I am sure that
the answer to this question is simple, but so far it is not obvious
to me.  Just how do I utilize each tar header to know how far to seek
in order to move up to the next header?

   -Richard L. Goerwitz              goer%sophist at uchicago.bitnet
   goer at sophist.uchicago.edu         rutgers!oddjob!gide!sophist!goer