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From: mwoehlke <mwoehlke AT tibco DOT com>
Subject:  Re: tar, win-path conversion bug
Date:  Thu, 27 Jul 2006 14:08:57 -0500
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Linda Walsh wrote:
> I think I've run into a bug concerning "tar" and the use of
> windows format paths.  It's not a bug that is difficult to work
> around, but it still seems as though it is a bug that someone may
> wish to address (in their spare time, of course :-).
> 
> I wanted to save a list of files into a tar archive where the
> list was created by a windows-based utility that generated
> windows-style pathnames.
> 
> Just to see if it was "supported" at all, I decided to try it with
> 1 file first, before attempting the whole archive.
> 
> Created file /tmp/tst that contained 1 filename:
> c:\WINDOWS\msagent\chars\brocklee.acs
> 
> My command line was:
> tar cvpf /tmp/tst.tar -T /tmp/tst --ignore-case --no-recursion
> 
> My output was:
> tar: Removing leading `c:\' from member names
> tar: c\:\\WINDOWS\\msagent\\chars\brocklee.acs: Cannot stat: No such 
> file or directory
> tar: Substituting `.' for empty member name
> tar: : Cannot stat: No such file or directory
> tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
> ----
> ls gives:
>  > ls -lGg C:\\Windows\\msagent\\chars\\brocklee.acs
> -rw-r----- 1 3614596 Jul  5  2002 C:\Windows\msagent\chars\brocklee.acs
> 
> Note in "tar", the backslash before the filename wasn't
> doubled as were the other backslashes:
>    tar: c\:\\WINDOWS\\msagent\\chars\brocklee.acs
>                                     ^^
> 
> If I edit the input file and add an extra "backslash" before
> the filename, like:
> c:\WINDOWS\msagent\chars\\brocklee.acs
>                         ^ extra backslash
> 
> Then tar "works".

Just a guess... '\b' is a valid escape sequence (backspace, or 0x08 in 
ASCII). None of the other characters after '\'s are valid escape 
sequences. Therefore it looks like 'tar' treats '\' followed by a 
character as an escape sequence if it recognizes it, otherwise it treats 
it literally. The other solution would be to use a sed script to double 
the '\'s, but as you observed, using POSIX paths would be better.

I forget if '-T -' is valid; if it is, you could do something like:
cat file_list.txt | xargs -n 1 cygpath -u | tar <args> -T - <args>

-- 
Matthew
Ok, so the quotes aren't entirely original.


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