tar fs copy
Guy Harris
guy at sun.uucp
Tue Oct 22 17:10:19 AEST 1985
> Our 4.2 version of tar.c doesnot have a -C option nor does the man page
> says so.
Wanna bet? Here's the relevant page, snatched from "/usr/man/man/tar.1"
right off the 4.2 tape:
If a file name is preceded by
.BR \-C ,
then
.I tar
will perform a
.IR chdir (2)
to that file name. This allows multiple directories not
related by a close common parent to be archived using short
relative path names. For example, to archive files from /usr/include
and from /etc, one might use
.ti +0.5i
tar c -C /usr include -C / etc
It's in the "tar" source as well. You just didn't check the whole manual
page or the whole source file.
> In the search of the 'C' option, i found an 'F' option. Again, no comment,
> no man page coverage.
It is rather a hack - it prevents directory files with the name SCCS and
plain files which:
have a name of one or two characters in length
have a name ending in ".o"
have the name "core" or "errs"
or, in some circumstances, have the name "a.out"
from being put onto a tape. Presumably, this is so that only source files -
not SCCS files, object files, executable images (there is a comment saying
"SHOULD CHECK IF IT IS EXECUTABLE", although since they have a "stat" of the
file I have no idea why they *don't* so check), or droppings like core dumps
and "errs" files - I believe it is a custom to redirect the output of
compiles, or the error output anyway, to "errs".
It is probably not documented 1) because it *is* such a hack and 2) because
there is no guarantee that it will be in all subsequent 4.xBSD releases.
Guy Harris
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