Re: Alternative to tar?
> > Do you know of any lighter/simpler alternative to the tar program? [...]
> > Any idea?
>
> cpio?
>
> --
> RMA.
Thanks Mihamina, Kushal and Mark.
Actually what I want is to compress a set of ascii files. I did some
preliminary tests and I'd like to use 7zip or xz.
When used on single files, xz performs consistently better... Well,
actually, these individual files are small so this might just be related
to a fixed size header which is just smaller in the xz file format...
But xz also allows stream compression using pipes, which is definitely a
plus.
However, that's it: xz can't compress a full directory. I tried to use
tar but the FS metadata make the compressed file heavier.
cpio (completely forgot about this one) allows me to reach 7zip
compression ratio with xz, works very well with streams and is available
on many, if not all Linux systems. Thanks for your suggestion Mihamina,
Kushal.
Kushal, I did not find any option to disable FS metadata preservation in
tar man page. I might have missed something though. But I am curious to
see if this can be achieved with tar.
Mark, thanks for your suggestion. I have not been precise enough. And
actually, xz files can be catted together, but each of the xz file keeps
its header. And since these headers are almost identical, one can
compress them again. But still, the result is not great.
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