mirror of
https://github.com/wezm/wezm.net.git
synced 2024-12-23 20:49:56 +00:00
25 lines
1 KiB
HTML
25 lines
1 KiB
HTML
Strangely enough I had the need to determine if it was possible to create a
|
|
valid but empty tar file. Turns out it is. The method varies slightly depending
|
|
on your flavour of tar program, here's how to do it on three of the big ones:
|
|
|
|
<strong>BSD</strong>
|
|
<code>tar cvf empty.tar --from-file /dev/null</code>
|
|
|
|
<strong>GNU (Linux)</strong>
|
|
<code>tar cvf empty.tar --files-from /dev/null</code>
|
|
|
|
<strong>Solaris</strong>
|
|
<code>tar cvf empty.tar -I /dev/null</code>
|
|
|
|
<strong>MinGW / MSYS</strong>
|
|
<code>tar cvf empty.tar --files-from NUL</code>
|
|
|
|
Thanks to Paul Bußmann for the MSYS suggestion.
|
|
|
|
Now if you wondering why I would want this, here's the explanation. I work on a
|
|
batch processing system that processes files delivered from other systems. In
|
|
some cases its necessary to wait for a file to arrive but give up after some
|
|
time. In order to give up we copy an empty file (automatically) so that the
|
|
processing proceeds normally. Ordinarily this is an empty plain text file but
|
|
for the system I'm working on I'm expecting a tar file, hence the need for an
|
|
empty one.
|