Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site astrovax.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!ihnp4!astrovax!wls
From: wls@astrovax.UUCP (William L. Sebok)
Newsgroups: net.unix
Subject: Re: tar .vs. cpio - (nf)
Message-ID: <416@astrovax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 13-Aug-84 20:11:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: astrovax.416
Posted: Mon Aug 13 20:11:05 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 14-Aug-84 02:37:35 EDT
References: <226@haddock.UUCP> <2541@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Organization: Princeton Univ. Astrophysics
Lines: 25

>In article <226@haddock.UUCP> johnl@haddock.UUCP writes:
>>  - reading file names from stdin is a feature, not a bug.  You can use
>>    find to enumerate just the files you want rather than having to dump
>>    everything in a directory tree, e.g.
>>
>>	$ find somedir -mtime -14 -print | cpio -oB >/dev/rmt0
>>
>>    (dump only files modified within the last two weeks.)  Doing this
>>    with tar is pretty hard.
>
>It isn't really very hard:
>	tar  `find ...`
>
>Accepting file names on the command line is the Unix convention.
>    Barry Margolin

No.  It may be the Unix convention but it is not useful for dumping large
numbers of files (like when doing a backup).  There is a limit on how large
an argument list can be passed to a program.  On the Vax under 4.2 BSD as
distributed this is 10240 characters.  This can be easily exceeded in a
medium large file system.  Heck, it is sometimes exceeded in a run-away
uucp spool directory.
-- 
Bill Sebok			Princeton University, Astrophysics
{allegra,akgua,burl,cbosgd,decvax,ihnp4,noao,princeton,vax135}!astrovax!wls