Re: [Bug-tar] Possible bug in auto detection of extraction program

[Sasa Vilic]

Thank your for your quick response. We did "fix" the issue by forcing the bzip 
decompression algorithm (-j option).

Checking for magic bytes would probably fix the issue, although I would like to 
suggest additional methods to improve tar:

* -a option for example, could be also used for decompression, forcing tar to 
look at file extension
* some other option to tell tar that this archive is compressed and that it 
should try to decompress it first,
* documenting auto detection and providing warning, that it might not work in 
each case.

Regards,

Sasa Vilic


----- Ursprüngliche Mail -----
Von: "Paul Eggert" <address@hidden>
An: "Sasa Vilic" <address@hidden>, address@hidden
Gesendet: Montag, 14. April 2014 19:01:16
Betreff: Re: [Bug-tar] Possible bug in auto detection of extraction program

On 04/14/2014 06:41 AM, Sasa Vilic wrote:
> I guess that in out particular case it just might be that accidentally 
> checksum is correct.

Thanks for the bug report.  Perhaps tar could be modified to not only 
look at the checksum, but also attempt to decode the first header (as a 
sort of "larger" checksum).  That would have fixed your problemand would 
fix the typical case of this sort of thing,though I suppose it still 
wouldn't work in general.