tar Options
GNU tar has a total of eight operating modes which allow you to
perform a variety of tasks. You are required to choose one operating
mode each time you employ the tar program by specifying one, and
only one operation as an argument to the tar command (two lists
of four operations each may be found at section The Three Most Frequently Used Operations and
section The Five Advanced tar Operations). Depending on circumstances, you may also wish to
customize how the chosen operating mode behaves. For example, you may
wish to change the way the output looks, or the format of the files that
you wish to archive may require you to do something special in order to
make the archive look right.
You can customize and control tar's performance by running
tar with one or more options (such as --verbose (-v), which
we used in the tutorial). As we said in the tutorial, options are
arguments to tar which are (as their name suggests) optional.
Depending on the operating mode, you may specify one or more options.
Different options will have different effects, but in general they all
change details of the operation, such as archive format, archive name,
or level of user interaction. Some options make sense with all
operating modes, while others are meaningful only with particular modes.
You will likely use some options frequently, while you will only use
others infrequently, or not at all. (A full list of options is
available in see section All tar Options.)
Note that tar options are case sensitive. For example, the
options `-T' and `-t' are different; the first requires an
argument for stating the name of a file providing a list of names,
while the second does not require an argument and is another way to
write --list (-t).
In addition to the eight operations, there are many options to
tar, and three different styles for writing both: long (mnemonic)
form, short form, and old style. These styles are discussed below.
Both the options and the operations can be written in any of these three
styles.
@FIXME{menu at end of this node. need to think of an actual outline for this chapter; probably do that after stuff from chap. 4 is incorporated.}
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