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Re: Difference between tar and ar

__/ [ Tristan Miller ] on Thursday 23 March 2006 02:13 \__

> Greetings.
> 
> Quoth the GNU ar(1) man page:
>> The GNU ar program creates, modifies, and extracts from archives.  An
>> archive is a single file holding a collection of other files in a
>> structure that makes it possible to retrieve the original individual
>> files (called members of the archive).
>> 
>> The original files' contents, mode (permissions), timestamp, owner,
>> and group are preserved in the archive, and can be restored on
>> extraction.
> 
> This description could apply equally well to tar.  So why two separate
> programs and file formats?  Is there something about the ar format which
> makes it particularly well-suited for making executable code libraries but
> not general-purpose archives?  And likewise, is there something about the
> tar format which makes it unsuitable for executable code libraries?
> 
> Regards,
> Tristan
 
I'd venture to guess that the relationship between ar and tar is similar to
the relationship between grep, egrep, fgrep (among similar examples). I
personally tar to backup files and proserve all file and directory
attributes, as well as case sensitivity (on Windows filesystems).

With kind regards,

Roy

-- 
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