[Bug-tar] GNU tar/1.26 --remove-files with joker will remove/delete the created archive if one existed before

[Klaus Gentzsch]

Hi GNUs,

the idea was to tar all files matching to an archive with the same
base-name

With some testing (w/o --remove-files) the archive was overwritten again
and again.
Maybe I oversaw that the previous written archive was added into the
next version of the archive - maybe not - because I cannot reproduce the
circumstances exactly due to the use of the sudo-command and different
owners of the files with the original buggy command...
($ sudo tar --remove-files -zcvf .authz-svn.copy.2014-07-22.tar.gz
.authz-svn.copy.*)

I found nothing mentioned about this is in GNU's version NEWs
and nothing about it searching on keywords with google and duckduckgo...

I created some test-files to verify that:
   The newly created archive file (length = 0), overwriting the previous
one,
   will be added to the archive itself, but at that time with no content
(length 0)

> $ ll
>
> total 52
>
> drwxr-xr-x 3 admin admin 4096 Jul 22 18:35 ./
>
> drwxr-xr-x 7 root     root     4096 Jul 22 18:16 ../
>
> -rw-rw-r-- 1 admin admin   42 Jul 22 18:35 test.001.txt
>
> -rw-rw-r-- 1 admin admin   42 Jul 22 18:35 test.002.txt
>
> -rw-rw-r-- 1 admin admin   42 Jul 22 18:35 test.003.txt
>
> -rw-rw-r-- 1 admin admin   42 Jul 22 18:35 test.012.txt
>
> -rw-rw-r-- 1 admin admin   42 Jul 22 18:35 test.014.txt
>
> -rw-rw-r-- 1 admin admin   42 Jul 22 18:35 test.023.txt
>
> -rw-rw-r-- 1 admin admin   42 Jul 22 18:35 test.024.txt
>
> -rw-rw-r-- 1 admin admin   42 Jul 22 18:35 test.025.txt
>
> -rw-rw-r-- 1 admin admin   42 Jul 22 18:35 test.027.txt
>
> -rw-rw-r-- 1 admin admin  247 Jul 22 18:30 test.all.tar.gz    **)
>
> drwxrwxr-x 2 admin admin 4096 Jul 22 18:20 testdir.bup/
>
> address@hidden:~/test$ tar --remove-files -czvf test.all.tar.gz test.*
>
> test.001.txt
>
> test.002.txt
>
> test.003.txt
>
> test.012.txt
>
> test.014.txt
>
> test.023.txt
>
> test.024.txt
>
> test.025.txt
>
> test.027.txt
>
> test.all.tar.gz
>
> address@hidden:~/test$ ll
>
> total 12
>
> drwxr-xr-x 3 admin admin 4096 Jul 22 18:35 ./
>
> drwxr-xr-x 7 root     root     4096 Jul 22 18:16 ../
>
> drwxrwxr-x 2 admin admin 4096 Jul 22 18:20 testdir.bup/
>
> address@hidden:~/test$
>

**) If I let tell (-t) the content of the previous .tar.gz it showed a
length of 0 test.all.tar.gz

I hope this helps - and I would expect/prefer...
a) an error message - saying the destination already exists // okay,
that's not linux like
b) if we overwrite, we should not add that archive file :) and therefore
never remove it :)

Okay, so this is more about expectations and expected behaviour than
about bugs...

Thank you all for your efforts.

BRs Klaus