On Thu, 13 Nov 1997, Brad Salai wrote:

> There is a thing about tar that makes it slightly harder to use than it
> might otherwise be.
> 
> You have to get the options in the right order,
> 
> tar -zxvpf bin.tar.gz   works, but
> 
> tar -zxvfp bin.tar.gz   doesn't
> 
> Once you know this, only the occasional tyop causes problems, but why does
> it have to be that way?

That is because 'bin.tar.gz' is a parameter to the '-f' option.  Really,
what you are doing is:

tar -z -x -v -p -f bin.tar.gz
and 
tar -z -x -v -f -p bin.tar.gz

The -p option doesn't take a paremeter.  -f take as a parameter the file
you want to extract...

> As for ftp, mget is a nice idea, but it asks you to confirm that you still
> want  each file as it comes up. This makes it impossible to just get a
> collection of files, either by matching a pattern, or listing the files,
> without sitting there.

Type "prompt" - it will say "interactive mode off", and then it will
silently get everything matched.  I believe there is still some security
issues with the ftp getting things you don't really want though (like
../.rhosts or something). 

Hope this helps,
	Rick

=========================================================================
Rick Byers                                      Internet Access Worldwide
rickb@iaw.on.ca                                		     System Admin
University of Waterloo, Computer Science                    (905)714-1400
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