Re: [Bug-tar] file name with backslash is not archived

[Hugo Mildenberger]

On Tuesday 02 November 2010 08:38:34 Paul Eggert wrote:
> Ah, thanks, that explains things.  But the problem was not
> within tar: it was that tar was being given the wrong
> command-line argument.

No Paul,  the bug really occures when tar unquotes a string passed 
from command line. I changed your test program a bit to accept 
a file name from command line ...

#include <stdio.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>

int
main (int argc, char **argv)
{
  const char *file_name =  (argc > 1 ) 
                                      ?   *++argv
                                      :   "Please provide a filename";
  struct stat st;
  int status = lstat (file_name, &st);
  fprintf(stderr,"lstat('%s'): status was %d = %m\n",file_name,status);
  return status ? 1 : 0;
}

... and compiled it to a program named "test2".


$ touch 'hello world\n'

$ ls -l hello\ world\\n 
-rw-r--r-- 1 hm hm 0 Nov  2 11:31 hello world\n

$ ./test2 hello\ world\\n 
lstat('hello world\n'): status was 0 = Success

$ ./test2 "hello world\\n" 
lstat('hello world\n'): status was 0 = Success

$ ./test2 'hello world\n' 
lstat('hello world\n'): status was 0 = Success

$ ./test2 "hello world\n" 
lstat('hello world\n'): status was 0 = Success

$ ./test2 'hello world\\n' 
lstat('hello world\\n'): status was -1 = No such file or directory


Now running the same tests with tar:

$ tar --version
tar (GNU tar) 1.24

$ tar -cf x.tar hello\ world\\n 
tar: hello world\n: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors

$ tar -cf x.tar "hello world\\n" 
tar: hello world\n: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors

$ tar -cf x.tar 'hello world\n'
tar: hello world\n: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors

$ tar -cf x.tar "hello world\n" 
tar: hello world\n: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors

$ tar -cf x.tar 'hello world\\n' 
(Success)