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From: Chris Faylor <cgf AT cygnus DOT com>
Date: Tue, 4 Jul 2000 21:21:47 -0400
To: Cygwin list <cygwin AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com>
Subject: Re: Tar.exe doing nothing
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In-Reply-To: <20000705001223.49031.qmail@hotmail.com>; from bones0_list@hotmail.com on Wed, Jul 05, 2000 at 02:12:33AM +0200

On Wed, Jul 05, 2000 at 02:12:33AM +0200, Jonas Jensen wrote:
>Well, silly me :-)
>
>Now, 2 more questions about that:
>
>-What the hell is the purpuse of that feature?

Tar used to be commonly used with a tape device.  If you don't use the
-f option it defaults to an arbitrary device for extraction.  I assume
that cygwin defaults to standard input.

In case it isn't obvious to you, the Cygwin project did not invent the
tar program.  This tar behavior is far from new.  The tar program has
been a standard part of UNIX for a long long time.  Cygwin is a UNIX
emulation environment, so...

>-Is there an easy program to unzip the contents of a .tar.gz file
>without first using gzip.exe and then tar.exe?  Or a good way to set up
>an alias/script to do this?

I sounds like you still aren't reading the "tar --help" output very
closely.

The '-z' option automatically uncompresses an archive before extraction
or creation:

tar -xzf somefile.tar.gz

cgf

>> Jonas Jensen wrote:
>>>When I use the tar.exe file to try and extract something, it just sits
>>>there, like it's a word processor...  it lets me type on the console,
>>>but it doesn't react on any input, like when you start sort.exe in
>>>DOS...  except that when I start a new line, it doesn't move the cursor
>>>all the way to the left, it just sits where I left off...
>>>
>>>I can use "tar --help", but whenever I type "tar -x anyfile.tar", it
>>>shows this weird behavior.
>>
>
>Corinna wrote:
>>Weird?  Why weird?  It's doing completely right! You should _read_ the
>>output of `tar --help', that might give you a clue.  ;-)
>>
>>Corinna
>>
>>Hint: Search for option '-f'

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