relative pathname question!

[Michael Greim]

In article <20437 at watmath.waterloo.edu<, sahayman at watmath.waterloo.edu (Steve Hayman) writes:
< Sorry to leap into this discussion so late.  Anyway, in 
< article <591 at sbsvax.UUCP< greim at sbsvax.UUCP suggests
< using a little filter program to remove leading /'s from
< tar pathnames: (i.e.  filter <the-tape | tar xf -)
< 
[stuff deleted]
< Good idea, but isn't that kind of dangerous?  What happens when you have
< a data file that happens to have a '/' and a '\0' in those
< positions?    You don't want those moved around, you only
< want to diddle tar header blocks.
Yes, I wondered about that too. But I decided to worry about it only
after something went wrong. Nothing has so far.
I just tested the behaviour. Yes, it is wrong. Maybe I was just lucky
so far :-)
< 
< A program to do this safely really needs to know a little more
< about tar-format - fiddle the header blocks only, not the
< data blocks.   I think I have a version that will do that,
< I'll send it off to comp.sources.misc.
Ok. Am waiting for it.
< 
< ..Steve Hayman
	-mg
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# include <disclaimers/std.h>