Re: [Bug-tar] possible extraction issue : file named '['

[Paul Eggert]

Skunk Worx <address@hidden> writes:

> I am curious about why I can't incrementally extract a file named '['

GNU tar uses globbing when extracting from a file.  E.g.,

 tar -tf foo.tar '*.c'

will list all files whose names end in .c.

Clearly there's a bug in the way tar implements globbing, and it
should get fixed.

But there's a bigger question here.  I don't see where this behavior
of GNU tar is documented.  Perhaps I'm missing it, but I just don't
see it.  Also, this behavior is incompatible with traditional 'tar',
and (as your example shows) it makes it difficult to extract arbitrary
files by name from a tar image.

My feeling is that the globbing options like --ignore-case and
--anchored, which currently apply only to --exclude and the like,
should also apply to ordinary file names on the command line; and that
the default behavior should be like traditional Unix tar, i.e., no
globbing.

This would be an incompatible change to GNU tar, but it would make GNU
tar compatible with other tars.  People who like globbing in file
names would be able to get that behavior by using the --wildcards
option.

Comments?