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Old 8th December 2008
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TerryP TerryP is offline
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Join Date: May 2008
Location: USofA
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I was going to make an example, but I just realized that OpenBSDs tar doesn't suport @archive like FreeBSDs does.... lol.


looking at the FreeBSD manual page:

Code:
tar -c -f - newfile @original.tar
if original.tar contains the files oldfile1 and oldfile2; it will write an archive to standard output (-f -) containing newfile, oldfile1, and oldfile2. @archive just means, when parsing the list of files to archive, if you [tar] see @file.tar in the files list, open file.tar, and append it's contents to my new tape archive, rather then archiving file.tar.

Thus, if tar's new option parser supports it, these commands should be equivalent:

Code:
tar -c -f new.tar newfile @original.tar
tar -cf new.tar newfile @original.tar
tar cf new.tar newfile @original.tar
the f in bundled flags means to use the FIRST file in the file list as the archive to operate on; unless b was specified first in which case it uses the 2nd file ref.


Personally, if it's not one of the c, x, f, v, t, u, or r flags, I don't bundle them.
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