Re: GNU Tar on Windows XP

Hi, thanks for responding.

I was going off of
http://forums12.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?admit=109447627+1204469251779+28353475&threadId=1178036

The difference being the "." (dot) to match everything. However in gnu tar,
I'm able to use a single directory when I type in the
command line as I mentioned

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

J:\Temp Folders\wbtTemp>tar -c -f Top.tar Top

J:\Temp Folders\wbtTemp>tar -t -v -f Top.tar
drwsrwsrwx user/group        0 2008-02-29 21:16 Top/
drwsrwsrwx user/group        0 2008-02-29 21:16 Top/Middle/
drwsrwsrwx user/group        0 2008-02-29 21:16 Top/Middle/Bottom/

J:\Temp Folders\wbtTemp>

It creates the archive just fine, when I reference only "Top" as the file or
input argument.
However the problem is that gnu tar won't take the piped arguments from the
find command
to build a similar archive. I want to be able to "do it on the fly" meaning
I don't have to build
an empty dir structure then build the archive.

In the meantime I've found a alternative method, which isn't so bad...

(Just substitue Writing for Top  as a folder in the following)

J:\Temp Folders\wbtTemp>xcopy c:\writing "J:\Temp Folders\wbtTemp\writing\"
/t /e  :<-- creates an empty/temporary structure
J:\Temp Folders\wbtTemp>tar -c -f Writing.tar writing      '<-- creates an
archive of the dir structure
J:\Temp Folders\wbtTemp>tar -t -v -f Writing.tar             ;<--- shows all
folders
J:\Temp Folders\wbtTemp>rd /q /s writing                     ;<--- removes
the blank/temporary structure.

I was hoping there was a way to pipe the folder names to tar, but so far no
joy.

Jay


On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 7:23 PM, Bob Proulx <[email protected]> wrote:

> Gadrin wrote:
> > if I use
> > J:\Temp Folders\wbtTemp>tar -c -f Test.tar | find Top ! -type f
> > tar: Cowardly refusing to create an empty archive
> > Try `tar --help' for more information.
> > Top
> > Top\Middle
> > Top\Middle\Bottom
> >
> > tar gives up and won't create the archive. Am I doing something
> > wrong ? Just not possible ?
>
> Yes, you are doing something silly.  :-)  The -c option creates an
> archive.  You are telling tar with 'tar -c -f Test.tar' to create a
> tar archive Test.tar.  But you didn't give it any file arguments on
> the command line.
>
> And you are piping that into find which doesn't make sense to me
> either.  The find comand will find files and take an action such as
> outputing the name or other things but doesn't make sense receiving
> whatever input was going to go into it there.
>
> You probably wanted to do something like this:
>
>  tar -c -f Test.tar `find Top -type d`
>
> Except that requires a unix like command shell and your message showed
> you using the MS command.com and this won't work there.  It would work
> in bash but not in command.com.  You might be able to use bash for the
> command line like this.  I have not tried it.
>
>  bash -c "tar -c -f Test.tar `find Top -type d`"
>
> Bob
>



-- 
Thanks, Gadrin