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From: spolsky@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Joel Spolsky)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: relative pathname question!
Message-ID: <5762@super.upenn.edu>
Date: 5 Aug 88 19:51:03 GMT
References: <1670003@hpcilzb.HP.COM>
Sender: news@super.upenn.edu
Reply-To: spolsky@eniac.seas.upenn.edu.UUCP (Joel Spolsky)
Organization: University of Pennsylvania
Lines: 20

In article <1670003@hpcilzb.HP.COM> tedj@hpcilzb.HP.COM (Ted Johnson) writes:
>
>I read the manual (really!), but I still can't figure out how
>to copy everything from a directory onto a tape (with either
>tar or cpio) USING RELATIVE PATHNAMES (as contrasted to absolute
>pathnames).

Set your default directory using "cd" and just use 

tar cf /dev/whatever *

This will store all the files in the current directory with relative
pathnames and not absolute ones.

As far as I can tell, there is NO way to extract tar files with
absolute pathnames anywhere except their original positions.

Joel Spolsky
was:     U. of Pennsylvania
is:      Bell Communications Research
will be: Yale College