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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mira.net.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!metro!metro!asstdc.scgt.oz.au!nsw.news.telstra.net!act.news.telstra.net!imci3!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.mathworks.com!news2.mathworks.com!newscaster-1.mcast.net!informatik.uni-bremen.de!gina.zfn.uni-bremen.de!news.dfn.de!news.uni-leipzig.de!news1.urz.tu-dresden.de!irz401!uriah.heep!news From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Making a multi-volume backup to /dev/fd0 using tar Date: 28 May 1996 06:49:59 GMT Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden Lines: 49 Message-ID: <4oe7mn$3hd@uriah.heep.sax.de> References: <DrpIsx.y7@ecf.toronto.edu> <4nq2e0$a6n@sidhe.hsc.fr> <4nsma9$5t1@fang.cs.sunyit.edu> <ufohney4am.fsf@cumulus.sky.bln.sub.org> <4o9cf8$1iq@uriah.heep.sax.de> <pmh.833198743@ardbeg.islay.sub.org> Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.heep.sax.de Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.6 X-Phone: +49-351-2012 669 X-PGP-Fingerprint: DC 47 E6 E4 FF A6 E9 8F 93 21 E0 7D F9 12 D6 4E pmh@islay.sub.org (Patrick M. Hausen) wrote: > >The fact that GNU tar supports historical (inconsistent) practice > >doesn't mean you should publically recommend it. > > Pardon? > > I thought, tar's syntax was > > tar <options> <arguments to the options> <file> ... Nevertheless, this is inconsistent with the remainder of the system. Why teaching people old legacy inconsistency (mention: yes, teach: no). > So it should not matter, if you type > > tar cvfb /dev/bla 9k ... > tar vbfc 9k /dev/bla ... > tar cfbv /dev/bla 9k ... But it does matter if you prepend a hyphen. Many of the advanced (GNU) tar options don't fit into the legacy scheme anyway. > The same, IMHO, holds for find. Who invented that brain damaged -x and -d ? > Find syntax is > > find <path-list> <predicate-list> > > - no options here. What's wrong with Nope. find [options] <path-list> <predicate-list> There's a big difference between an element in the predicate-list, and an option. The predicates apply to each matching entry, while the options are in effect before the find starts. (That doesn't explain why the -xdev primary is missing though, since many implementations happen to have it.) -- cheers, J"org joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)