The --null option causes --files-from=file-of-names (-T file-of-names) to read file names terminated by a NUL instead of a newline, so files whose names contain newlines can be archived using `--files-from'.

--null

Only consider NUL terminated file names, instead of files that terminate in a newline.

The `--null' option is just like the one in GNU xargs and cpio, and is useful with the `-print0' predicate of GNU find. In tar, `--null' also causes --directory=directory (-C directory) options to be treated as file names to archive, in case there are any files out there called `-C'.

This example shows how to use find to generate a list of files larger than 800K in length and put that list into a file called `long-files'. The `-print0' option to find just just like `-print', except that it separates files with a NUL rather than with a newline. You can then run tar with both the `--null' and `-T' options to specify that tar get the files from that file, `long-files', to create the archive `big.tgz'. The `--null' option to tar will cause tar to recognize the NUL separator between files.

$ find . -size +800 -print0 > long-files
$ tar -c -v --null --files-from=long-files --file=big.tar

@FIXME{say anything else here to conclude the section?}

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