--atime-preserve and --compare

[Eric Kostelich]

Hello folks,

I've looked at your 1.13 tar distribution and thank you for
a useful piece of software.  One of the features that I appreciate
is the --atime-preserve option to preserve access times on files
that are archived.

I think it would be useful if --atime-preserve also worked to
preserve the access times of files whose contents are compared
with the --compare option.  That is, the command sequence
        tar --atime-preserve -c -f archive.tar file.c ...
        tar --atime-preserve --compare -f archive.tar
should leave the access time of file.c unmodified after the
contents are compared.  In this way, system administrators
can preserve access time data not only when the archive is
created but can also do so if a --compare becomes necessary
after the archive has been written.

I've attached a modified compare.c that attempts to do this.
It's been lightly tested.

You may or may not agree with my suggestion but in any case
I'd appreciate acknowledgment that someone at least read this
message.

Best regards,
--Eric Kostelich
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric Kostelich, Professor, Dept. of Mathematics, Box 871804,
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-1804.
Telephone:  (480) 965-5006.   Fax:  (480) 965-8119.

compare.c
Description: Text document