Re: tar vs device special files

[Robert Elz <kre%munnari.OZ.AU@localhost>]

    Date:        Sat, 28 Oct 2023 23:32:56 -0400 (EDT)
    From:        Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>
    Message-ID:  <202310290332.XAA23292%Stone.Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>

  | It appears to be specifying pax's behaviour, not tar's.  Is tar
  | specified to use the same format by reference, or is tar not specified
  | but everyone just implements it to use pax's ustar format, or what?

POSIX used to specify tar, long ago, but there were (as I understand it)
too many incompat variants, so it was dropped.  There is no standard for
tar (which makes it, as an interchange format, essentially useless).
However, as I understand things, most modern tar implementations are
in effect a variation on pax but only support pax's ustar format
(and not the others that pax also supports).

You should have been expecting that as the link you were given ended
in pax.html#some-tag-or-other

kre

ps: if I managed to somehow spam the list with a copy of the POSIX pax
spec (in PDF format), I apologies - I intended to send it just to mouse@
but didn't delete tech-userlevel ... I tried to kill it, but the network
was faster than I am, I believe.   Hopefully some list sanity checking
will have dropped the message, or something (it has not returned here).