[Bug-tar] --keep-newer-files problem

[Elwood C. Downey]

Hello,

I have a directory that contains some files. I have a tar file that contains 
many of the same files but not all and
some are newer and some are older than the existing files. For files that exist 
both already and in the tar, I want to
replace only the ones from the tar that are newer than the existing files. I 
use --keep-newer-files for this and it
works fine /except/ if the file does not already exist then it is not restored 
at all. I would expect that if the file
does not already exist it can not be newer and so the file would be created. 
You can see this behavior from the
following verbose snippet:

Maildir/Keep/Keep_200712
tar: Maildir/Keep/Keep_200712: Warning: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
tar: Current `Maildir/Keep/Keep_200712' is newer

My version is tar (GNU tar) 1.15.1

I hope this is fixed someday. In the mean time, is there a way to do what I 
want (extract only newer files or ones
that do not already exist)?

Thank you.



-- 
Elwood Downey, President/CTO, Clear Sky Institute, Inc.
http://www.clearskyinstitute.com