>> Readers, >> >> I tried without success the following command syntax >> >> tar --extract --file=/path/to/tarball< /path/to/list/of/files.txt > > Your question is about tar and/or the shell, neither of which are part > of coreutils. You may have better results by asking your question on a > more appropriate list. That said... >
Sorry; I have not read farther than the first paragraph of the home page; in retrospect I suppose appropriate mailing lists should be those for 'bash' and 'tar'. >> Is there a reason why redirect does not work with tar command? > > If you want the contents of files.txt to be passed as command line > arguments, then you need to use command substitution, not file redirection: > > tar --extract --file=/path/to/tarball $(cat /path/to/list/of/files.txt) > Thanks; for the benefit of other novices, information about 'command substitution' is in the manual 'bash reference manual'. > > Or if you insist on using redirection, then use '-' as the --files-from > argument to tell tar to read from stdin: > > tar --extract --file=/path/to/tarball --files-from=- > </path/to/list/of/files.txt Please, from where did you get the information about the use of the dash (-) character in this context?
