relative pathname question!

[Joel Spolsky]

In article <1670003 at hpcilzb.HP.COM> tedj at hpcilzb.HP.COM (Ted Johnson) writes:
>
>I read the manual (really!), but I still can't figure out how
>to copy everything from a directory onto a tape (with either
>tar or cpio) USING RELATIVE PATHNAMES (as contrasted to absolute
>pathnames).

Set your default directory using "cd" and just use 

tar cf /dev/whatever *

This will store all the files in the current directory with relative
pathnames and not absolute ones.

As far as I can tell, there is NO way to extract tar files with
absolute pathnames anywhere except their original positions.

Joel Spolsky
was:     U. of Pennsylvania
is:      Bell Communications Research
will be: Yale College