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From: jim@newmedia.UUCP (Jim Beveridge)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: WANTED:  TAR UNCOMPRESSOR FOR MS-DOS
Message-ID: <444@newmedia.UUCP>
Date: 13 Feb 91 21:42:07 GMT
References: <1991Feb12.043510.6138@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> <1991Feb13.060554.4933@hoss.unl.edu>
Organization: New Media Graphics, Billerica, MA
Lines: 37

In article <1991Feb13.060554.4933@hoss.unl.edu>, vandevek@fergvax.unl.edu (James M. VandeVegt) writes:
> In article <1991Feb12.043510.6138@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> jhl2@po.CWRU.Edu (John H. Leach) writes:
> >
> >If anyone has a copy of a .tar decompressor for an MS-Dos machine
> >i would appreciate it if you could email me a copy.  On a 
> >similar note, does anyone know why alot of the stuff on anonymous
> >ftp sites is tarred and .Z compressed both?
> >
> {$F=1}      {Turn flame mode on}
> Tar is NOT a compressor.  It mearly places numerous
> files into one file so that they can be stored together
> for ease of later finding them and making sense out of them.
> {$F=0}

{$F=maybe}
Well, actually, if you have one of the new versions of tar that
can automatically call compress, then it *looks* like it does
compression...   (I know, it really calls compress, but try
explaining fork(), wait(), system(), etc. to a new user.)
{$F=disable}


In answer to the original question:
tar(1) allows you to create a single file that contains an exact
duplicate of some part of a directory tree.  Directory names,
owner, permissions, etc are all preserved in the tar file.
You then compress it to make it smaller and reduce disk space
and/or reduce network bandwidth when the file is posted.

I recommend getting the MKS Toolkit for _anyone_ who needs
Unix commands frequently under DOS.  The only problem 
I know of is that MKS compress can't handle 16 bit encoding.
(So I have another PD compress/uncompress that does)
The MKS tar works great.  (I don't work for them, I'm just
a satisfied user)

		Jim