How to archive several files with tar?

[Adrian J Ho]

In article <JC.91Jun8194845 at raven.bu.edu> jc at raven.bu.edu (James Cameron) writes:
[sample session deleted]
>	   So, what you are looking for is basically:
>% tar cvf file.tar .
>	   to create tape archive of current directory.  

Make that:

	tar cvf ../file.tar .

The idea is _not_ to put the tar file in the directory you're tar'ing,
because your tar file will otherwise end up being included in itself.
In the worst case, it could be the _last_ file included, which means
that your tar file could end up being _twice_ as large as it's
supposed to be.