OT: why tar is strange (was: The REALLY bad thing about Python lists ..)

[Stephen Hansen]

    I don't think this is really a case of which one is more productive or
fast, but more on where you are at the time that you're doing it. If you're
sitting in a shell, then using 'tar zvxf' is just as fast as any GUI version
would be. But if you're already in a GUI and aren't working in a shell, then
starting up the shell and doing your tar'n isn't going to work for you then,
either.
    My problem with tar was not remembering the 'zxvf' part, but instead
remembering exactly how the file was either a) spelled, b) capitolized, or
c) punctuated(sp?). Even with an 'untar' script to do it, I just might
forget to capitolize a letter or put a '-' in the wrong place.

    Not that you can't use wildcards to make it quicker, I know, mind you..
but I don't think the shell approach would ever be quicker then be using
WinRAR (Am I the only one who doesn't use Winzip?) to right click on the
compressed-file and click 'Extract to...' or 'Extract to (name of file)\' in
that ever so friendly context menu. Two quick clicks :)

--S

Garry Hodgson <garry at sage.att.com> wrote in message
news:393403D7.CAA8AB7D at sage.att.com...
> Grant Griffin wrote:
(snip)
> > But when extracting
> > from someone _else's_ archive, I think the GUI thing clearly has the
> > command-line approach beat.
>
> maybe.  i type "Unpack archive-name" in a shell window, and i'm done.
> "Unpack" being a trivial python or ksh (i forget which, and don't care)
> script which figures out the right thing to do.