Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ncar!unmvax!bbx!bbxsda!scott
From: scott@bbxsda.UUCP (Scott Amspoker)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: uncompress and tar (was: none)
Message-ID: <705@bbxsda.UUCP>
Date: 2 May 90 15:00:31 GMT
References: <23157@adm.BRL.MIL> <6420@star.cs.vu.nl>
Reply-To: scott@bbxsda.UUCP (Scott Amspoker)
Organization: Basis International,  Albuquerque, NM
Lines: 28

In article <6420@star.cs.vu.nl> maart@cs.vu.nl (Maarten Litmaath) writes:
>)uncompress -c $1.'tar'  | tar xtopvwf - <-
>                               ^^        ^^
>                               ^^        What's this?
>                               ^^
>                               On SunOS 4.0.3c only one of `x' and `t'
>                               is allowed; anyway `x' is intended here.
>
>It's a bug in tar: it sends the confirmation message to stdout (!) and
>reads the user input from stdin (!)...  :-(
>In both cases tar should have opened /dev/tty.
>Peter, it seems you're stuck with the temp file if you want to use the
>`w' option.

Also, I might add that on some systems the 'v' switch outputs to
stdout.  So a tar command such as
 
	tar cvf - somefiles

would frequently create a corrupted tar file on stdout.  This may
not show up unless the output is large since the 'v' output appears
to be buffered and could appear rather late in the output file.

-- 
Scott Amspoker
Basis International, Albuquerque, NM
(505) 345-5232
unmvax.cs.unm.edu!bbx!bbxsda!scott