Re: [Bug-tar] Warning message when reading partial blocks from stdin.

[Gunnar Ritter]

Joerg Schilling <address@hidden> wrote:

> Gunnar Ritter <address@hidden> wrote:
> > Joerg Schilling <address@hidden> wrote:
> > > > Laurence Bond <address@hidden> writes:
> > > > > gzip -d -c a_tar_file.tar.gz | tar tvf - > /dev/null
> > > > > gtar: Read 9216 bytes from -
> > [...]
> > > A tar implementation should only write a warning/error message 
> > > only when the byte count is not a multiple of 512.
> >
> > I think it hardly makes sense to impose any requirements on incoming
> > data beyond the two zero-filled 512-byte blocks at the end of the actual
> > archive, in particular when physical blocking is meaningless as with a
> > pipe.
> The standard requires the tar archives to be blocked with a multiple of
> 512 bytes.

And what, exactly, is the point in requiring this when reading parts of
archives that are completely meaningless?

        Gunnar