Re: [Bug-tar] Tar doesn't stop tape after extracting all specified files

[Sergey Poznyakoff]

Paul Eggert <address@hidden> wrote:

> Also, it would be useful to give the user a way to extract an
> arbitrary set of files from an archive.  This could be done by having
> an --occurrence=N option, to let you select the Nth occurrence of a
> file from the archive.

Done. I have replaced --first-copy option with --occurrence, which
implements this semantics. It takes an optional argument, so (1)
the argument must be separated from the option by an equal sign with
no interveneing whitespace, and (2) --occurrence is equivalent to
--occurrence=1.
 
> The option should be cumulative, e.g.:
> 
>   tar --occurrence=3 foo --occurrence=2 bar
> 
> would select the 3rd occurrence of foo and the 2nd occurrence of bar.

It sounds very promising, but it implies "POSIXLY_CORRECT" option
scanning, i.e. parsing of options should stop upon encountering
the first non-option argument. I doubt that enforcing it will be
the right thing to do, since many tar users may rely on the
standard GNU way of parsing the command line...
 
Regards,
Sergey