From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Aug 25 13:22:44 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id NAA02208 for questions-outgoing; Sun, 25 Aug 1996 13:22:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from who.cdrom.com (who.cdrom.com [204.216.27.3]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id NAA02193 for ; Sun, 25 Aug 1996 13:22:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.Clark.Net (mail.clark.net [168.143.0.10]) by who.cdrom.com (8.7.5/8.6.11) with ESMTP id JAA25294 for ; Sun, 25 Aug 1996 09:01:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from clark.net (root@clark.net [168.143.0.7]) by mail.Clark.Net (8.7.3/8.6.5) with ESMTP id LAA00385; Sun, 25 Aug 1996 11:58:15 -0400 (EDT) Received: from clark.net (markus@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by clark.net (8.7.1/8.7.1) with ESMTP id LAA05100; Sun, 25 Aug 1996 11:58:15 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199608251558.LAA05100@clark.net> To: "Francisco Reyes" cc: "FreeBSD questions" Subject: Re: How to get tar to read input files from file? In-reply-to: Your message of "Sun, 25 Aug 1996 04:14:15 EDT." <199608250815.IAA30890@pop01.ny.us.ibm.net> Date: Sun, 25 Aug 1996 11:58:14 -0400 From: Mark Plummer Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > I have a book which has a line like > tar -cvf /dev/fd0 'cat backup.list'>backup.log > > It is supposed to read the file names from a file called backup.list. > When I try it it dowsn't work. I tried also using that didn't work either. > > Any suggestions on how to pipe a file to tar to read input files? > try this: tar -cvf /dev/fd0 `cat backup.list`>backup.log the forward quote (') is just a regular quote. the backward quote (`) means to substitute the output from the backquoted command at a given place in the command line. note that some systems (i don't know if freebsd is one) have limitations on the size of the command line so exceedingly large backup.list files could cause this to fail. markus -- Mark Plummer, markus@clark.net, +1 410 796 1272