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From: guy@gorodish.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: tar
Message-ID: <19928@sun.uucp>
Date: Thu, 28-May-87 14:25:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.19928
Posted: Thu May 28 14:25:07 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 30-May-87 02:09:53 EDT
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>   We have such an Integrated Solutions machine, and the swapping option is
> quite nice for writing VAX-compatible tapes (our users are used to VAX byte
> order and receive many such tapes in the mail for analysis).

It's not "VAX-compatible" and "VAX byte order".  It's not a question
of the byte order of your machine.  IBM 360s and Suns, to give two
examples, are big-endian machines, but they write character strings
onto magtapes in the same way that VAXes do - character N+1 follows
character N on the tape.  Everybody *should* write tapes in this
fashion; unfortunately, not everybody does.

I don't have any of the ANSI standards on mag tape handy to see
whether they require this; it would be nice if they did.  (Note that
the ANSI standards for labelled tapes are intended to permit tapes
written on one machine to be read on another machine.  The labels on
these tapes are full of character strings, so if you write your tape
in the wrong order you are certainly contravening the spirit, if not
the letter, of the ANSI standard.)
	Guy Harris
	{ihnp4, decvax, seismo, decwrl, ...}!sun!guy
	guy@sun.com