Then perhaps I am misinterpreting the following sentance from the EXAMPLES
section of the tar man page:

Note that you cannot mix bundled flags and -- style flags; you can use
single-letter flags in the manner above, rather than having to type

I take this to mean that 'tar --some-option xzvf ...' will not work,
and 'tar --some-option -x -z -v -f ...' will so you sont have to type 
'tar --some-option --extract --gzip --verbose --file ...'.  I take it that
'tar --some-option -xzvf ...' is also valid.  

So, my first e-mail was a bit in accurate; you can mix '--' and '-' style
arguments, but not '--' and 'no-dash' style.

Is this more accurate??


Yours,

Aaron Nelson

---------------------------------------------------------
A    A    R    O   N        N    E    L   S    O    N
nelson@null.net

"grep .. grep .. grep" --(Frog with UNIX caught in its throat)

On Thu, 9 Jul 1998, Mason Loring Bliss wrote:

> Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 08:16:02 -0400
> From: Mason Loring Bliss <mason@acheron.middleboro.ma.us>
> To: Aaron Nelson <nelson@geekhouse.org>,
>     Bruce Anderson <brucea@wavefront.com>
> Cc: NetBSD Users <netbsd-users@NetBSD.ORG>
> Subject: Re: Tar and Find Problem
> 
> On Wed, Jul 08, 1998 at 02:28:17PM -0700, Aaron Nelson wrote:
> 
> > According to the man page (if I unstood it correctly), you can't mix
> > argument styles ( these styles being no dash 'tar cvf', single dash 'tar
> > -c -v -f', and double dash 'tar --create --verbose --file').
> 
> Eh? I don't remember the last time I did a binary upgrade without it
> involving `tar --unlink -xvpf`.
> 
> I don't see where the man page prohibits this, and it seems to work in
> practise...
> 
> -- 
> Mason Loring Bliss...mason@acheron.middleboro.ma.us...www.webtrek.com/mason
> "In the drowsy dark cave of the mind dreams build their nest with fragments
>  dropped from day's caravan."--Rabindranath Tagore...awake ? sleep : dream;
>