how universal is tar format? SYSV?

[Joseph S. D. Yao]

>                          ...   As a robustness note, even tho UCB puts
> directory names on the tape SYSV just grumbles and ignores and finishes
> fine.  Conversely, given a tape to read on a new system I would budget
> more time if it were a cpio tape.

If you're creating a 4BSD tar tape for a USG or unspecified UNIX system,
you should use the 'o' keyletter.  This says, omit those directories.
Also, if you are using cpio on a 4.2+BSD system, you must beware of how
it handles symbolic links (typically, incorrectly).  We had one problem
(which we can't duplicate) in which it changed the dates of the source
files to something negative!  The ctime() routine was unable to cope
with this at all (*sigh*).

	Joe Yao		hadron!jsdy at seismo.{ARPA,UUCP}