les wrote: > Les Stott wrote: > > > tar -cvf /dev/null > > > > the tar to /dev/null actually doesn't take that long at all, maybe a few > > minutes depending on the size. > > Gnu tar actually recognizes if stdout is connected to /dev/null (even if > you redirect instead of specifying -f) and doesn't bother to read the > file contents. I think that was an optimization intended to be used
aaaargh. that's absurd. are you sure? it would completely eliminate any usefulness of /dev/null. i once heard a similar (and possibly apocryphal) story about some CPU h/w engineers that thought they were doing the s/w folks a favor by making the NOP instruction take zero time. :-) not sending output to /dev/null makes just as much sense. paul =--------------------- paul fox, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (arlington, ma, where it's 25.3 degrees) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ BackupPC-users mailing list [email protected] List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users Wiki: http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
