Re: [Bug-tar] skip-old-files feature request

[John Stanley]

On 11/07/2012 04:38 AM, Joerg Schilling wrote:

John Stanley <address@hidden> wrote:

Hi,
I was wondering if it would be possible in the 'skip-old-files' option 
warning messages, to have a distinction made between existing files and 
existing directories, i.e., instead of, e.g., printing:

tar: ./usr/local: skipping existing file

print:

tar: ./usr/local/: skipping existing directory

This would make it much easier to parse existing files and existing 
directories.  I have been using the following simple patch to handle 
this in my work:

+++ tar-master-1.26.90.new/src/extract.c        2012-11-06 
18:18:28.853013706 -0500
@@ -644,8 +644,12 @@ maybe_recoverable (char *file_name, bool
        switch (old_files_option)
         {
         case SKIP_OLD_FILES:
-         WARNOPT (WARN_EXISTING_FILE,
-                  (0, 0, _("%s: skipping existing file"), file_name));
+         if (current_stat_info.had_trailing_slash)
+           WARNOPT (WARN_EXISTING_FILE,
+                    (0, 0, _("%s/: skipping existing directory"), 
file_name));
+         else
+           WARNOPT (WARN_EXISTING_FILE,
+                    (0, 0, _("%s: skipping existing file"), file_name));
           return RECOVER_SKIP;

         case KEEP_OLD_FILES:

A directory is determined by checking for the directory type and not by 
checking for a trailing slash.....

understood.

But what do you expect from this? Skipping a directory just means not updating 
meta data.

Currently, using --skip-old-files, I get a listing of directories and non-directory
files without any indication of file type. It would be nice to have an indication in
this listing of file types, or at least, which files are directories and which are not,
so that I can then easily pick out non-directory files.

What I'm doing is extracting from a tar.xz archive, without overwriting existing files,
then, examining which files where not extracted, then making a decision about extracting
some or all of the pre-existing files.

Jörg