Re: [Bug-tar] GNU tar extensions documentation

[Sergey Poznyakoff]

iSteve <address@hidden> wrote:

> I've got a longlink in tar, which has some filename as data. The
> following block, however, is not marked as link, it is containing
> data. I thought that he next should be marked as symlink then?

When a symbolic link points to a file whose name is longer than
100 characters, the traditional GNU tar archive store these data as
follows: first a block is written with its size field containing the
actual length of the name the link points to, with "././@LongLink" in
its name field, 'K' in its type field, valid uname and gname fields, 
and the rest of fields set to 0. Immediately following this block the
target name is written in integer number of blocks. Following this goes
the usual tar header describing the link itself.

Regards,
Sergey