Hi On my quest for info I found this email on this page: bug-tar Info Page (gnu.org) <https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-tar>.
The page suggests that I should send an email and it would reach the GNU maintainers. So if I have reached you by mistake, please ignore this email. ---------------------------------- *Now to topic,* I came across the concept of Tar blocking today. As per wikipedia (Under 'File Format' section): *" most modern tar implementations fill the extra space with zeros. "* My question is why is the last (and only last) block not of variable size? If it was, bytes of data stored could be recorded using 2 bytes. This metadata can be stored in the header. To me, this is much more efficient than wasting 511 bytes (by zeroing) in a 512 blocking system. The number of bytes used to store metadata about the last block can vary depending on the blocking size used. I understand that one most common argument is who cares about a couple of bytes when storage is cheap. But I care. What do you think about this? Is there anything that I may have missed? Sincerely
