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Re: Newbie Q: Where are my kernel sources?



Florian Ernst wrote:
> On Thursday 14 August 2003 23:00, Sebastian Kapfer wrote:
> 
> > You better stick to that. "tar xvfj" tries to open a file called
> > "j", which is probably not what you wanted. Surprise, surprise :-)
> 
> To my surprise tar recently (since when?) seems to be able to
> understand the "f" option correctly even if it is not last. tar (GNU
> tar) 1.13.25 at least works like that.

It is another GNU extension.  Traditional 'tar' programs look for the
filename after the 'f', but must be seperated by a space.  GNU tar
looks for a space, skipping past other options if present, and then
the filename after that.  Which means other options can be between.
But other tar programs don't like options between the f and the
filename.  So it is good practice to keep doing it that way so that
usage will be portable to other systems.

Bob

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