Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!think!ames!killer!pollux!dalsqnt!rpp386!jfh
From: jfh@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US (The Beach Bum)
Newsgroups: comp.bugs.misc
Subject: Re: Problems with afio?
Summary: No, problems with the options.
Message-ID: <7649@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US>
Date: 7 Oct 88 03:17:22 GMT
References: <12307@steinmetz.ge.com>
Reply-To: jfh@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US (The Beach Bum)
Organization: River Parishes Programming, Dallas TX
Lines: 44

In article <12307@steinmetz.ge.com> davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes:
>  Having just gotten a posting about afio, I dusted off my old copy,
>added a patch I've been saving, and tried it out again. I found some
>limitations, which may be because I'm not doing it right, the docs don't
>mention the feature, or I have an old version. If these are real
>limitations (I can't call them bugs in fairness) I guess I stay with
>cpio.

The author, in his transfinite wisdom, changed a few of the options so
that they do not work the same way as they do with cpio.

There are many new options, some flags have changed, and a couple of
idioms [ like piping the archive by default to stdin or stdout ] no
longer exist.  A very good reading of the afio docs is always in order.

>1) How to restore a single file? In cpio I say "cpio -ic file < archive"
>   and only "file" is restored, with some versions supporting a quoted
>   wildcard name as well.

With afio it's

	afio -iy file archive

and you get the exact same result.  If you wanted all but file you'd use

	afio -iY file archive

>Am I missing something, or will everyone say "fix it and post the
>diffs?" Having fixed (4) already, I could do the others, but if I have
>an old version perhaps someone could point to an ftp or uucp server
>which has the current version.

I think a good re-reading of the docs [ and a re-writing as well ... ]
is in order.  The program is fantastic, however, the author didn't bother
to stick with cpio idioms, which is what everyone is used to.

If you do find a bug I'm certain the author would love to receive the
diffs.  I had an email discussion back when it first came out and he
seemed very reasonable.
-- 
John F. Haugh II (jfh@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US)                   HASA, "S" Division

      "Why waste negative entropy on comments, when you could use the same
                   entropy to create bugs instead?" -- Steve Elias