On Sun, 2005-07-17 at 15:39 -0400, Gregory Pittman wrote: > here's what I get: > > tar -xvjf ./Scribus_devel-logo_0.*
OK, first, tar will treat any files after the first argument as a request to extract /only those files/ from the archive that was the first argument. So: tar xvjf archive.tar.bz2 archive2.tar.bz2 does not say "extract all files from archive.tar.bz2 and archive2.tar.bz2" but rather "extract the file archive2.tar.bz2 from archive.tar.bz2". Second, tar takes '-' to mean 'stdin/stdout' depending on mode. For extract, it'll be stdin - ie read the archive from stdin. I don't know where it's getting '-' in your case. The file to read is taken as the first argument after the 'f' argument, eg: tar xvzf archive or tar -xvzf - (note that a leading - is ignored) but anyway, I'd try again with extracting just one at a time. It's pretty weird to use tar to contain just one file anyway, so you would not normally need to go to this sort of fuss. When I need to extract a bunch of tarballs in one directory I usually use a simple shell loop, eg: for f in *.tar.bz2 ; do tar xvjf "$f" done -- Craig Ringer
