On 09-Jul-10 10:18:10, Brett Parker wrote:
On 09 Jul 11:08, Ted Harding wrote:
On 09-Jul-10 09:42:15, Richard Parsons wrote:
By the way -- why did you put the option "w" into "-xwzf"? Previous suggestions stated "-xvvzf" (though admittedly the repetition in "vv" is redundant: you can just as well use "-xvzf"); maybe you misread "vv" as "w"?
I copied "tar -xvvzf" from the examples on the manual page. Maybe the double v means, "be even more verbose"?
Richard
Hmmm ... I don't have any man page for tar ('man tar') which gives examples of use -- on SuSE, Red Hat, or Debian. Maybe it's an Ubuntu (or other) re-write. In any case, the way command options usually work, a repetition would do nothing extra. Options are read in one by one. When a specific option is encountered, a flag is set in the running code for the command. The first 'v' would set the "verbose" flag. The second 'v' would simply set it again.
Erm, I have a man page for tar in Debian... Maybe you haven't got man installed :p
I do have 'man' installed, and I do have a man page for 'tar'. It just doesn't give any examples of use. That's what I said.
However, I can access 'info tar' on the Red Hat system, and there I can find examples of use. In particular, the "vv" option can be found, and indeed it does result in extra verbosity:
`-v' used once just prints the names of the files or members as they are processed. Using it twice causes `tar' to print a longer listing (reminiscent of `ls -l') for each member.
There is a distinction between 'man' and 'info'! I think people have been saying "man page" when they meant "info document". I also have 'info' installed on Debian, but Debian do not include info for 'tar on ideological grounds. From 'man tar' on Debian:
BUGS The GNU folks, in general, abhor man pages, and create info documents instead. Unfortunately, the info document describing tar is licensed under the GFDL with invariant cover texts, which violates the Debian Free Software Guidelines. As a result, the info documentation for tar is not included in the Debian package.
I strongly suspect a typo in that version of the man page that you are looking at!
Retracted!
It's the same "typo" in the Debian man page.
I doubt that it's a typo.
With verbosity, many many things simply change the output level, so NORMAL -> EXTRA -> QUITE A LOT -> OH MY GODS IT'S TELLING ME WHAT EVERY LINE OF CODE IS DOING
There are several things that take the same option more than once.
For example, run: aptitude moo aptitude -v moo aptitude -vv moo aptitude -vvv moo
Now tell me that the number of times an argument is repeated doesn't change anything. Go on. Really. -- Brett Parker
I did say "the way command options *usually* work" ...
Ted.
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