Re: Heads up: gtar gone from base system

> > Brian missed a pair of parenthenis.  The example should read:
> >
> > ( cd srcdir ; tar cf - . ) | ( cd destdir ; tar xpf - )
> 
> All the first perens does is leave you sitting wherever you were before 
> starting, whereas my example would have left you sitting in srcdir.
> It makes no functional difference in the tar/untar job itself.
> 
> In truth, my example was from something I do all the time on SCO and is in 
> sco's tar man page but it's such basic shell and tar usage that it works the 
> same everywhere. I do it on Linux and FreeBSD too and I just verified on a 
> 5.3 box just to make sure instead of relying on memory and common sense.
> It's still in my fingers too, used it for many years. Lately I have
> been using cp -pR for the same job.

caution:
     -R    If source_file designates a directory, cp copies the directory and
           the entire subtree connected at that point.  This option also
           causes symbolic links to be copied, rather than indirected through,
           and for cp to create special files rather than copying them as nor-
           mal files.  Created directories have the same mode as the corre-
           sponding source directory, unmodified by the process' umask.
*******************************************************************************
           Note that cp copies hard linked files as separate files.  If you
           need to preserve hard links, consider using tar(1), cpio(1), or
           pax(1) instead.
*******************************************************************************

as usual, the difference is in the small print :-)

danny