--compression & --exclude option

[Marco]

I've tried this command:

xar --compression gzip -cf test.xar.gz test/

but when i try to uncompress it with "gzip" command, it returns:

gzip: test.xar.gz: not in gzip format

The same happens with bzip2 format.

Also, i want to exclude all files that begin with dot, so i've tried:

xar -cf test.xar.gz test/ --exclude "*/.*"

but it doesn't work, but if i try:

xar -cf test.xar.gz test/ --exclude */.*

it excludes all files!!

Could anyone help me?

Thank
Marco

[Rob Braun]

On Sun, Aug 12, 2007 at 05:58:16AM -0700, Marco wrote:
>
> I've tried this command:
>
> xar --compression gzip -cf test.xar.gz test/
>
> but when i try to uncompress it with "gzip" command, it returns:
>
> gzip: test.xar.gz: not in gzip format
>
> The same happens with bzip2 format.

xar is not like tar. Using a compression method here is not the
same as xar -cf - test/ | gzip -c - > test.xar.gz. For more
information on the xar file format, please see the wiki:
http://code.google.com/p/xar/wiki/xarformat

> Also, i want to exclude all files that begin with dot, so i've tried:
>
> xar -cf test.xar.gz test/ --exclude "*/.*"

xar uses posix regexes, and this is not a proper posix regex for
what you want to do:
xar --exclude=".*/\..*" -cf test.xar test/

> but it doesn't work, but if i try:
>
> xar -cf test.xar.gz test/ --exclude */.*

This is using shell globbing and is not passing the expression
to xar. Your shell's documentation should have more information
on globbing and quoting.

Rob