e-letter wrote: > Eric Blake wrote: > > Common convention among many unix tools is to treat '-' as a synonym for > > stdin. I don't know if 'info tar' explicitly calls this out, though > > that would be a question for bug-tar. > > Couldn't find explanation in 'man tar' and after a few years, have yet > to master navigation within 'info' documents! However, thanks again > anyway. :)
The Unix man pages do. See the -f option here for one example. http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=tar&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+8.2-RELEASE&arch=default&format=html tar has had a long history using - for stdin and stdout. The tar info pages say: http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_node/files.html#SEC106 If you give a single dash as a file name for `--files-from', (i.e., you specify either `--files-from=-' or `-T -'), then the file names are read from standard input. Bob
