From: Mark Eichin <eichin@cygnus.com> > and note that unlike tar, cp -a will actually *handle* pathnames over > 100 characters Well, we've beaten this dead horse for long enough. I think GNU tar will handle over-100-character filenames. There is an extension to the tar format to handle them. However, my "tar-in-a-function" that I wrote for dpkg does not have that extension, which is why dpkg won't handle it. Thanks Bruce