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Date: Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:46:01 -0700
From: Tim Kientzle <kientzle@freebsd.org>
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To: Steven Hartland <killing@multiplay.co.uk>
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Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Adding remove file option to BSD tar?
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Steven Hartland wrote:
> What do people think about adding an equivalent to
> gtars --remove-files?

Shouldn't be too tricky.  If you think you know
how to implement it, send me the diffs.

Doing this "safely" is nearly impossible, of
course.  In the compressed case, the compression
pipeline buffers a LOT of data (bzip2 analyzes 900k
blocks at a time).  But even in the
uncompressed case, archive blocking means that
you CANNOT flush the archive after every file.
A "safe" implementation would have to defer
the actual deletion for a long time.   Even
without that, though, this is the sort of
feature that many people would no doubt find
useful.

Tim Kientzle