Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!dptg!rutgers!uwvax!tank!eecae!netnews.upenn.edu!jes From: jes@mbio.med.upenn.edu (Joe Smith) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Unix without tar? Message-ID: Date: 30 Aug 89 14:22:33 GMT Sender: news@netnews.upenn.edu Organization: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA Lines: 17 Recently, someone asserted that tar archives aren't a suitable distribution format because they aren't understood by every Unix. Given some reasonable constraints of their contents (ascii files, names < 14 chars), is this true? Doesn't every Unix have tar? I know there has been some (d)evolution of tar, but aren't simple archives still portable? With the availability of GNU tar (and others ?) which are portable enough to run on other OS's, I found the assertion hard to believe, but I couldn't refute it.