__/ [ Jordan Abel ] on Sunday 26 March 2006 16:34 \__
> On 2006-03-26, Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> __/ [ 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).
>
> Not really. For example, egrep/grep/fgrep all take pretty much the same
> options. tar and ar use completely different file formats, options, etc.
> What other 'similar examples' were you thinking of?
The variant of GNU, as in gCOMMAND and COMMAND. This is rather common, even
in programming language (sometimes (G)TK). I mistakenly thought that the "T"
in "tar" could represent some advancement of wrapping for some extra
functionality.
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