@FIXME{arrggh! this is still somewhat confusing to me. :-< }
@FIXME{show dan bob's comments, from 2-10-97}
Usually, tar will recursively explore all directories (either
those given on the command line or through the --files-from=file-of-names (-T file-of-names)
option) for the various files they contain. However, you may not always
want tar to act this way.
The --no-recursion option inhibits tar's recursive descent
into specified directories. If you specify `--no-recursion', you can
use the find utility for hunting through levels of directories to
construct a list of file names which you could then pass to tar.
find allows you to be more selective when choosing which files to
archive; see section Reading Names from a File for more information on using find with
tar, or look.
tar from recursively descending directories.
When you use `--no-recursion', GNU tar grabs directory entries
themselves, but does not descend on them recursively. Many people use
find for locating files they want to back up, and since
tar usually recursively descends on directories, they have
to use the `! -d' option to find @FIXME{needs more
explanation or a cite to another info file} as they usually do not want
all the files in a directory. They then use the
option to archive the files located via find.
The problem when restoring files archived in this manner is that the
directories themselves are not in the archive; so the
--same-permissions (--preserve-permissions, -p) option does not affect them--while users
might really like it to. Specifying --no-recursion is a way to
tell tar to grab only the directory entries given to it, adding
no new files on its own.
@FIXME{example here}
Go to the first, previous, next, last section, table of contents.