Xref: utzoo comp.unix.questions:8766 comp.unix.wizards:10415 Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!decvax!gsg!lew From: lew@gsg.UUCP (Paul Lew) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: tar frustration (was Re: relative pathname question!) Message-ID: <230@gsg.UUCP> Date: 11 Aug 88 09:59:36 GMT References: <2858@ttrdc.UUCP> Organization: General Systems Group, Inc., Salem, NH Lines: 25 From article <2858@ttrdc.UUCP>, by levy@ttrdc.UUCP (Daniel R. Levy): > > All this points up a "feature" of tar which I find frustrating: if I want > tar to tape-archive a large number of files randomly scattered all over the > file system (such as for an incremental backup) I'm SOL because tar wants > to be told either a directory to completely search or file names to archive, > via the argument list. "cpio" circumvents this problem, since I can feed it > a list of files, but what if I don't WANT to use cpio? Check with public domain tar posted to comp.sources.unix volumn 12. There is a flag 'T' which will take filenames from a file. I used it to save sources files like: find $src -print | sed \ -e '/\.o$/d' \ -e '/\.a$/d' \ -e '/~$/d' \ -e '/\/core$/d' \ -e '/\/a\.out$/d' | tar -c -T - It works out great. If $src is an absolute pathname, this tar will remove the leading /s when writing to tape. -- Paul Lew {oliveb,harvard,decvax}!gsg!lew (UUCP) General Systems Group, 5 Manor Parkway, Salem, NH 03079 (603) 893-1000