Hi folks, I'll first explain three commands that work as expected, then I'll provide fourth that doesn't quite do what I expect it to do. I've been banging my head against this for over a full workday and could use fresh sets of eyes.I tried this mostly on GNU tar version 1.17 but found the same results in 1.14 from another machine I had tested on.
1. When I perform a tar -cf somefile.tar . it tars the current directory I'm in, including hidden files & directories. (expected behavior) 2. When I perform a tar -cf somefile.tar * it tars the current directory I'm in, excluding hidden files & directories. (expected behavior) 3. When I perform a tar -cf somefile.tar --no-recursion *, it tars the current directory I'm in, and (now empty) directories for non-hidden directories. It does not include any files in any sub-directories. (expected behavior) 4. However, when I perform a tar -cf somefile.tar --no-recursion . it tars an empty directory called . with no files nor directories in it what so ever. (not what I expected) Example: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pictures]$ ls -a . . .. .hiddenfile .hiddenfolder realfile realfolder someotherfile.txt [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pictures]$ sudo tar cf somefile.tar --no-recursion * [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pictures]$ tar tf somefile.tar realfile realfolder/ someotherfile.txt [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pictures]$ sudo tar cf somefile2.tar --no-recursion . [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pictures]$ tar tf somefile2.tar ./ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pictures]$ sudo tar cf somefile3.tar . tar: ./somefile3.tar: file is the archive; not dumped [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pictures]$ tar tf somefile3.tar ./ ./somefile2.tar ./.hiddenfolder/ ./.hiddenfolder/.hiddenfileinisidehiddenfolder ./.hiddenfolder/fileinsidehiddenfolder ./realfolder/ ./realfolder/realfileinrealfolder ./realfolder/.hiddenfileinrealfolder ./realfolder/someotherfileinrealfolder.txt ./someotherfile.txt ./realfile ./.hiddenfile ./somefile.tar [EMAIL PROTECTED] Pictures]$ echo wtf wtf Am I simply using it incorrectly? If so, what is a simple way to non-recursively tar a directory that contains hidden files?
