> The format still is this 70's absurdity with octal-in-ASCII headers (like the “traditional” CPIO) and block aligned. Well, it is a format designed for magnetic tape.
Yeah, most of the ways tar is weird stop seeming weird when you consider the context. It can easily be appended without rewinding the tape to update metadata, it can be read/edited/fixed with just a text editor, it ends with 2 blocks of null bytes because tape doesn't tell you when you hit the end of your data like a file would.
Also, I have a love-hate relationship with the "numbers as octal in ASCII" thing - on the bright side, it avoids questions of endianness;P (Edit: Well, I guess it's big endian...)
Yeah, most of the ways tar is weird stop seeming weird when you consider the context. It can easily be appended without rewinding the tape to update metadata, it can be read/edited/fixed with just a text editor, it ends with 2 blocks of null bytes because tape doesn't tell you when you hit the end of your data like a file would.
Also, I have a love-hate relationship with the "numbers as octal in ASCII" thing - on the bright side, it avoids questions of endianness;P (Edit: Well, I guess it's big endian...)