Ron Stodden wrote:
> Brian,
>
> tar can interface directly with bzip2 as needed:
>
> tar -cvf <archive> --use-compress-program bzip2 *
> tar -xvf <archive> --use-compress-program bzip2
>
> It all works beautifully (except that bzip2, as you would expect,
> takes a very very very long time to do its job).
>
Does bzip2 take any longer than gzip?
Also, that's one way to do what that does, however the following may be
a little easier to write
tar cvf <archive>
bzip2 <archive>
and
bunzip2 <archive>.bz2
tar xvf <archive>
The - isn't necessary for cvf and xvf, albeit because most programs
require at least one -, it's easier for newbies to remember to use the -
with tar, than to not use the -. I don't know of any other programs or
utilities which don't require the - to specify options, albeit do like
the idea.
It's kind of like the Perl saying "there are many ways to do it" (it
being what ever).
Otherwise, what's the comparative report on the differences between
bzip2 and gzip? I think that it was Brian who said that gzip produces
slightly less compressed sizes, but other than that up not up on the
comparative stats for compression tools.
What ever happened to cpio? This one seems to have been the least
popular, but worked fine for me when I last used it. From what I
recall, cpio was the alternative to tar on Unix platforms, and was
thought to be sometimes better than tar.
mike
