Hi,
Since version 1.30, tar lacks an unambiguous listing format, by which I
mean an output of tar -t that one can then pass to tar -x and will
correctly represent all legal paths.
The natural approach, I think, would be to have an argument something
like -print0 that could then be passed to tar --null
Currently, tar listings may be quoted or unquoted.
Unquoted paths are ambiguous, because you don't know if a newline
represents a newline in a path or is a separator between paths.
Quoted paths are unambiguous; however since tar 1.30,
--verbatim-files-from (which is necessary to cope with paths starting
with a - which are otherwise treated as command-line arguments) does not
unquote paths.
So if you (might) have paths that start - and paths that contain
newlines, you can't win[0].
It used to be possible to correctly and unambiguously use quoted paths
and --verbatim-files-from together because --verbatim-files-from would
unquote. That was broken with the following change in tar (which went
into 1.30):
"
2017-11-09 Sergey Poznyakoff <g...@gnu.org.ua>
Fix --verbatim-files-from
* src/names.c (read_next_name): Don't unquote name read from the
file, if --verbatim-files-from option is in effect.
(names_options): improve description of --verbatim-files-from
"
Regards,
Matthew
[0] this caused actual problems with "pristine-tar" in Debian, so it's
not solely a theoretical concern
[this was originally reported as Debian bug #1025331, but it's an
upstream issue]
