On Jul 4, 2012, at 7:01 AM, Denis Excoffier wrote: > > When tar (e.g. tar-1.26) creates an archive of a directory, the > ordering of files (as shown by "ls -f") is preserved in the archive. > > I would like an option to make this ordering constant (e.g. alphanumeric), > in order that two directories that compare equal (with "diff -r") would > produce the same archive (provided of course that appropriate --mtime, > --owner, --group and --mode options are also set to the same values).
Does this satisfy your requirement? find dir | sort | tar cf output.tar -I - The option you propose can have unpleasant implications for tar's memory requirements. Sorting each directory requires first reading all the items in that directory into memory. Tim
