[Bug-tar] Error code for empty input files

[Alois Steindl]

Hello,
I backup the home-directories of a few machines to a Dat tape. Between 
every tar file there is some empty space.
Up to now, when I read the tape with successive calls to tar, I 
therefore obtained an empty output from every second call. Since tar 
returns an error code -2 for empty input files, my script file, which 
reads all archives on the tape, fails at the first empty space.
Now I have to distinguish different situations:
a) tar fails at these empty spaces,
b) there is really a problem with the tape (input/output error).

It would be fine, if there were some possibility to simply distinguish 
these cases. At the moment I am thinking about grepping the stderr 
output for the harmless situation.

Best wishes
Alois