Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!banyc!atina!secyt!peter
From: peter@secyt.UUCP (Pedro Victor Pintus)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Re: undocumented compress option to SCO tar
Message-ID: <424@secyt.UUCP>
Date: 8 Nov 90 21:26:07 GMT
References: <1990Nov6.205259.18525@cs.rochester.edu>
Reply-To: peter@secyt.UUCP (Pedro Victor Pintus)
Organization: Secretaria de Ciencia y Tecnica, Argentina
Lines: 23

In article <1990Nov6.205259.18525@cs.rochester.edu> lubkin@cs.rochester.edu (Saul Lubkin) writes:
>There is an undocumented option to SCO Unix 3.2 v2 tar, that compresses
>files (using compress) when creating an archive, and that uncompresses
>them when restoring with tar.
>
>Someone posted the undocumented line switch in a previous note that
>I've lost.  Can anyone retrieve this?
>
>Thanks,
>
>					Saul Lubkin

IMHO, the use of undocumented options is an unaceptable risk,
especially for backup usage, since those undocumented options may
(eventually) dissapear in further releases of the software.
If you want cut the media usage in archiving, you can tar to a file, then
compress the file, then tar the compressed file.
This appears (at least to me) to be safer, since there is no dependencies
on strange software options.

Pedro V. Pintus. (Internet: peter@secyt.ar)
Disclaimer: The above text is my personal opinion; my employer has nothing
	    to do with this.