Re: Tar --unlink-first

[jkb]

In <address@hidden> address@hidden writes:

> GNU tar (1.13) doesn't seem to honour the --unlink-first.

Further to the above, having looked at the code, I now have the following
prelimary patch to 1.13:


*** extract.c.orig      Thu May  3 12:03:07 2001
--- extract.c   Thu May  3 12:18:08 2001
***************
*** 841,846 ****
--- 841,849 ----
        while (name_length && CURRENT_FILE_NAME[name_length] == '/')
        CURRENT_FILE_NAME[name_length--] = '\0';
  
+       if (unlink_first_option)
+       remove_any_file (CURRENT_FILE_NAME, recursive_unlink_option);
+ 
        if (incremental_option)
        {
          /* Read the entry and delete files that aren't listed in the

Basically it just adds the unlink_first_option check to DIRTYPE extraction
too. This seems to work for me. Indeed I cannot work out the reason for having 
a recursive_unlink_option if directories did not check for unlink-first.

I'll send this to address@hidden too.

James
--
James Bonfield (address@hidden)   Tel: 01223 402499   Fax: 01223 213556
Medical Research Council - Laboratory of Molecular Biology,
Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 2QH, England.
Also see Staden Package WWW site at http://www.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/pubseq/