(tar.info.gz) Selecting Archive Members

 
 6.2 Selecting Archive Members
 =============================
 
 "File Name arguments" specify which files in the file system 'tar'
 operates on, when creating or adding to an archive, or which archive
 members 'tar' operates on, when reading or deleting from an archive.
  Operations.
 
    To specify file names, you can include them as the last arguments on
 the command line, as follows:
      tar OPERATION [OPTION1 OPTION2 ...] [FILE NAME-1 FILE NAME-2 ...]
 
    If a file name begins with dash ('-'), precede it with '--add-file'
 option to prevent it from being treated as an option.
 
    By default GNU 'tar' attempts to "unquote" each file or member name,
 replacing "escape sequences" according to the following table:
 
 Escape         Replaced with
 -----------------------------------------------------------
 \a             Audible bell (ASCII 7)
 \b             Backspace (ASCII 8)
 \f             Form feed (ASCII 12)
 \n             New line (ASCII 10)
 \r             Carriage return (ASCII 13)
 \t             Horizontal tabulation (ASCII 9)
 \v             Vertical tabulation (ASCII 11)
 \?             ASCII 127
 \N             ASCII N (N should be an octal number of
                up to 3 digits)
 
    A backslash followed by any other symbol is retained.
 
    This default behavior is controlled by the following command line
 option:
 
 '--unquote'
      Enable unquoting input file or member names (default).
 
 '--no-unquote'
      Disable unquoting input file or member names.
 
    If you specify a directory name as a file name argument, all the
 files in that directory are operated on by 'tar'.
 
    If you do not specify files, 'tar' behavior differs depending on the
 operation mode as described below:
 
    When 'tar' is invoked with '--create' ('-c'), 'tar' will stop
 immediately, reporting the following:
 
      $ tar cf a.tar
      tar: Cowardly refusing to create an empty archive
      Try `tar --help' or `tar --usage' for more information.
 
    If you specify either '--list' ('-t') or '--extract' ('--get', '-x'),
 'tar' operates on all the archive members in the archive.
 
    If run with '--diff' option, tar will compare the archive with the
 contents of the current working directory.
 
    If you specify any other operation, 'tar' does nothing.
 
    By default, 'tar' takes file names from the command line.  However,
 there are other ways to specify file or member names, or to modify the
 manner in which 'tar' selects the files or members upon which to
 operate.  In general, these methods work both for specifying the names
 of files and archive members.
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