From: Josef 'Jupp' Schugt <jupp@...>
Date: 2004-05-02T04:39:29+09:00
Subject: The Art of Untarring (Was: SciTE Ruby Lexer)

Hi!

Simon Strandgaard wrote:
> Kaspar Schiess <eule@space.ch> wrote:
> [snip] 
> 
>>| BTW: your tar.gz file didn't have a top dir, which may mess other peoples
>>| unpack directory up. I suggest you fix it.
>>I have changed that. Sorry for messing up your dl directory and probably
>>others.
> 
> 
> Don't worry, history has learned me to always make a dir for that tar.gz
> I wish to untar, so no accident here.  
> 
> IMHO its just good practice to make a top-dir :-)

Using 'mc' hit F3 on any kind of supported  archive to see if there 
is a top-dir. FreeBSD does not install mc per default but it's in the 
ports.

For an uncompressed tar archive

tar tf archive.tar|head -1

is sufficient to see if there is a top-dir (use 'tjf' for '.tar.bz2' 
and 'txf' for '.tar.gz'). It should print something that ends in a 
slash and looks similar to the archive name :->

Josef 'Jupp' Schugt