Some thoughts on enhancing cpio(1)

[Craig Jackson]

Sam @ Deflt Consulting Corporation recently proposed several enhancements
to cpio(1).  I think that is a very interesting area of discussion.
I'm not sure where it leads, but it can at least be useful for persons
modifying a system or doing a port.

Sam left out the one change that we have found that we needed the most: byte
swapping the headers.  We have gotten cpio tapes from VAXes that we could
not read on our big-endian 68000 and Z8000 machines.  We ended up adding
a -h option to cpio, but ideally it would be done automatically, upon
detecting a swapped magic number.

The various byteswapping options which are present today are of limited 
utility if you can't read the header.  The -c option solves this problem, but
only if the person who made the tape thought to use it.

-- 
Craig
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