Re: : [Bug-tar] feature request: allow comments in files for the (-T and -X options

[Martin Simmons]

>>>>> On Thu, 4 Nov 2004 14:26:45 +0100, "Anton Tichawa" <address@hidden> said:

  Anton> Recently I started automating backups, using tar with file lists (-T 
and =
  Anton> -X options). It seems that comments, i. e. lines starting with '#', 
are =
  Anton> not allowed in such files, e. g. with a a file "weekly":

  Anton> # files to include in weekly backups
  Anton> /usr/src/dataman/*
  Anton> /var/log/boot*

  Anton> tar produces an error when called with

  Anton> tar cvzf blah -T weekly

  Anton> but things work fine when I remove the comment.

  Anton> IMHO, the possibility to include comments to self-document file lists =
  Anton> would be very nice.

The -T option is also used to archive lists of files generated by other
programs, e.g. find, so having a comment syntax would be bad idea (filenames
can begin with # too).

You could try passing the commented file through grep or sed to generate a
temporary file for the -T option (or use -T -).

__Martin