Re: [Bug-tar] Using period-slash in member names

[Pavel Raiskup]

On Friday, January 17, 2014 11:21:34 Joerg Schilling wrote:
> Pavel Raiskup <address@hidden> wrote:
> > what are the reasons to not take member name argument './file' and 'file'
> > equivalently?  So far I found only one point in documentation that it is
> > essential because tar preserves filenames (2.7. How to List Archives).
> 
> Are you asking this because of a possible file name length reduction?

Initially, I was asking to reveal reasons why e.g.:
  `tar -xf ARCHIVE ./file` != `tar -xf ARCHIVE file`

> Star strips off ./ before archiving files

I missed that, thanks.  But then you are not able to extract with
'./'-beginning member which could be considered even worse (inconsistent).
Still, concrete tar implementation is OT for this thread (bsdtar has
completely opposite behavior, e.g.).

I would like to see real reasons why to take members (and thus maybe store
file-names) this or that way.