Re: [Bug-tar] tar (GNU tar) 1.15.1 bugreport: tar -C <dir> doesn't support fileglobbing

[Helmut Waitzmann]

Ralph Corderoy <address@hidden> writes:

>Point taken, but it was meant to illustrative of basic shell issues on a
>system controlled by the user rather than a robust, catch anything
>thrown at us, backup strategy.  Filenames with spaces break most simple
>/bin/sh scripting techniques anyway...

Yes, that's right.  On the other hand:  I don't think that a user, which
apparently doesn't know about shell's globbing mechanism, will be
able to ameliorate a receipe which doesn't do its job.

>    x=
>    for f; do
>        test -x $f && x="$x $f"
>    done
>
>You have to muck around with later shells things like bash's arrays
>instead.

Yes.  Or use bash's printf format "%q" (and always use quotation marks
when expanding parameters):

x=
for f
do
   test -x "$f" && x="$(printf ' %q' "$x" "$f")"
done

Then split x to the positional parameters before using them:

eval set x "$f" && shift && tar -C /backup -cf /backup/tmp.tar ${1+"$@"}

Cheers,

Helmut
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