[gentoo-user] Re: Question about making a tarball

[Nikos Chantziaras]

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> 1) Better use -cjvpf  ("f") takes an argument (the filename of that tar
> to be crated) so it must be at the end.

That's why I usually use "tar -cjvp -f blabla.tar.bz2".  I always 
seperate options that take an argument from the rest.  But -cjvpf works 
too as long as "f" is at the end.  This means that if you combine many 
options after a single "-", only one one of them is allowed to take an 
argument; the last one.

It might also be easier for you to use long options instead of short 
ones (easier to read).  This:

   -cjvpf -C

Is equivalent to:

   --create --bzip2 --verbose --preserve-permissions --file --directory

So the original example becomes:

tar --create --bzip2 --verbose --preserve-permissions --file 
/data/Gentoo-stuff/stage4-x86-04-2009.tar.bz2 --directory /mnt/gentoo .

Which might be longer to write but perhaps easier to understand :P