Re: pax/tar/cpio: use stdout if TAPE is set to -

[Philip Guenther]

On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 12:41 AM, Dmitrij D. Czarkoff  wrote:
> The diff below makes tar treat "-" in TAPE environment variable as
> stdout, making it consistant with "-f" argument.  Could be a sane
> default for those who have no tape device.

Frankly, I think someone using TAPE=- would be *in*sane.  If a
program/script depends on tar writing to $TAPE (because it invokes tar
without 'f' option), then it probably also writes to stdout, which
will break the tar file in the suggested usage.  I would *almost*
rather make using tar without the -f option an error...

Also, the diff has a bug: "TAPE=- tar cv" won't behave correctly.


Philip Guenther

pax/tar/cpio: use stdout if TAPE is set to -

[Dmitrij D. Czarkoff]

Hi!

The diff below makes tar treat "-" in TAPE environment variable as
stdout, making it consistant with "-f" argument.  Could be a sane
default for those who have no tape device.

-- 
Dmitrij D. Czarkoff

Index: bin/pax/options.c
===
RCS file: /var/cvs/src/bin/pax/options.c,v
retrieving revision 1.86
diff -u -p -r1.86 options.c
--- bin/pax/options.c   24 May 2014 18:51:00 -  1.86
+++ bin/pax/options.c   1 Mar 2015 08:27:13 -
@@ -1006,6 +1006,8 @@ tar_options(int argc, char **argv)
arcname = getenv("TAPE");
if ((arcname == NULL) || (*arcname == '\0'))
arcname = _PATH_DEFTAPE;
+   else if ((arcname[0] == '-') && (arcname[1]== '\0'))
+   arcname = NULL;
}
 }