Tar

[Robert Nichols]

Rocky Hurley wrote:
> 
> ok... this is cut extremely short for brevity.
> 
> List to compress: AKA $tmpbkdir/bkuplist.txt
> 
> ====================================8<-----------------------------
> home/rocky/sshtunnel
> home/rocky/.xmms/
> home/rocky/.xmms/Skins/
[SNIP]

tar is doing exactly what you told it to do.  You asked tar to
process the directory "home/rocky/.xmms/", which tells tar to
recurse into that directory and process everything below it,
including recursing into all subdirectories it finds.  Then you
told tar to process the directory "home/rocky/.xmms/Skins/", and
tar obediently processes that directory and everything below it.
It is quite possible to have multiple copies of the same file in a
tar archive.  If that's what you ask for, that's what you get.

If you're building a list of things to include in a tar archive,
never include a directory name unless you really want *everything*
below that directory.  There is no way to include just a directory
name in a tar archive without having tar recurse into that directory.

-- 
Bob Nichols         rnichols at interaccess.com