Re: [Bug-tar] tar doesn't handle some tarballs created under Microsoft Windows

[Ville Oikarinen]

Is it really necessary to support backslashes in the file format?

The executable that creates the tar archive knows whether the backslash is 
to be interpreted as a separator or as a filename character. Otherwise it 
wouldn't be able to add the right files in the archive.

After this interpretation it only needs to normalize all paths to use 
normal slashes to make extraction deterministic.

Of course, if all Windows ports won't implement this proposal, the 
extracting tar executable is in trouble. Is there any guarantee that the 
file won't contain mixed slashes and backslashes?

- Ville Oikarinen