.TH RTAR 1 "14 November 1984" .SH NAME rtar \- read tape archive format file .SH SYNOPSIS .B rtar [ flags ] [ archive ] [ after ] [ files ] .SH DESCRIPTION .PP .I Rtar reads multiple files from a UNIX \fItar\fR format file, restoring the files to disk on the local host machine. Output filenames are mapped according to the IRAF filenaming conventions of the local host operating system. .IR Rtar 's actions are controlled by the .I flags argument. .I Flags consists of an \fB-\fR followed by a string of characters containing any combination of the function flags described below. Other arguments to .I rtar are the name of the archive file to be read, the name of the file on the archive at which reading is to begin, and the names of the files or directories to be read or to be excluded from the read. In all cases, appearance of a directory name refers to the files and (recursively) subdirectories of that directory. All .I rtar filename arguments are UNIX pathnames except .I archive, which is a host system filename. .PP The default action of \fIrtar\fR is to unpack all files from the \fItar\fR format standard input. The following flag characters may be used to further control the function of \fIrtar\fR: .TP 8 .B x The named files are extracted from the tape. If the named file matches a directory whose contents had been written onto the tape, this directory is (recursively) extracted. The owner, modification time, and mode are restored (if possible). If no file argument is given, the entire content of the tape is extracted. Note that if multiple entries specifying the same file are on the tape, the last one overwrites all earlier. .TP 8 .B r The extracted file replaces any existing file of the same name, i.e., .I rtar performs a delete before creating the extracted file. .TP 8 .B e Extract the entire contents of the tape \fIexcluding\fR the files or directories listed in \fIfiles\fR. .TP 8 .B a Advance to the archive file named by the \fIafter\fR argument before performing the main operation. The extract or list operation will begin with the file \fIafter\fR and continue to the end of the archive. .TP 8 .B t The names of the specified files are listed each time they occur on the tape. If no \fIfiles\fR argument is given, all of the names on the tape are listed. .TP 8 .B v Print more information about the tape entries than just their names. The verbose file list format gives the file permissions, the link flag (zero if there were no links to the file), the owner and group identification numbers of the file on the system that wrote the archive, the file size in bytes, the date of last modification of the file, and the file name. .TP 8 .B d Print detailed information about what \fIrtar\fR is doing. .TP 8 .B f .I Rtar uses the first filename argument as the host filename of the archive instead of reading from \fIstdin\fR. .TP 8 .B l Do not try to resolve file links by a disk to disk file copy. By default, if file A appears in the archive as a link to file B, \fIrtar\fR trys to resolve the link by performing a disk to disk copy of file B to A. This is valid providing file B was present in the archive and has already been extracted. If the \fBl\fR flag is present linked files will not be extracted. .TP 8 .B o Omit binary files when performing the extraction. A binary file is any file containing ASCII values other than 040 through 0176 (the printable ASCII characters), tab, or newline in the first 512 byte block of the file. .TP 8 .B b Output only binary byte stream files. By default, \fIrtar\fR outputs text files in the host system textfile format. The conversion from the byte stream \fItar\fR format to host textfile format may involve modification of the file, e.g., conversion from ASCII to EBCDIC. A binary extraction copies the file to disk without modification. .PP If the input archive file is a tape the blocksize must be a multiple of 512 bytes, with a maximum blocksize of 10240 bytes. Each archived file occupies an integral number of 512 byte blocks in the archive. .PP Filenames appearing in the file list are interpreted as prefix strings, i.e., a match occurs if the given string is a prefix of an actual filename in the archive. If the last character in the \fIfiles\fR filename is a \fB$\fR then an exact match is required (excluding the $ metacharacter). .SH DIAGNOSTICS .br A file read error occurring while reading the archive file is fatal unless caught and corrected by the host system. .br File header checksum errors result in skipping of the archive file currently being read, with execution continuing with the next archive file if possible. .br File write errors on the output file are reported but do not cause termination of \fIrtar\fR. The output file being written will be corrupted. .SH BUGS .br The current limit on file name length is 100 characters (this restriction is imposed by the standard UNIX \fItar\fR format). .br File links are not recreated.