Re: Improvement of man pages of TAR

[Paul Eggert]

On 2/13/22 08:11, Antonio Diaz Diaz wrote:
> Helge Kreutzmann wrote:
> > Man page: tar.1
> > Issue:    archive --> archive itself
> >
> > "%s: file is the archive; not dumped"
>
> FWIW, as a non-native English reader but somewhat experienced tar user, 
> I prefer the current message to the change proposed. I think it is 
> already clear what "the archive" means.

Also, I'm not seeing how adding "itself" would lessen confusion much in 
situations like this:

$ tar -cf foo.tar a b c foo.tar d e f g
tar: foo.tar: file is the archive; not dumped

Perhaps a rewrite of the diagnostic instead? Something like this?

$ tar -cf foo.tar a b c foo.tar d e f g
tar: foo.tar: archive cannot contain itself; not dumped