Notes on OS/2 TAR

This is a port of PD TAR to OS/2. All features are functional, except that
reading/writing to a "raw" device is not supported. I needed TAR
(Unix archiving) and COMPRESS (Unix LZW compression) to port Unix files
onto OS/2.

Ordinarily, Unix archives will be supplied as ".taz" files. The "z" at
the end of the name means that COMPRESS must be used to decompress the
file first:

        [D:\]COMPRESS -d ARCHIVE.TAZ

This will decompress the file, producing ARCHIVE.TA, which should then
be renamed to ARCHIVE.TAR. Note that COMPRESS.EXE comes from CIS, and
was not supplied with *any* documentation. It is, however, fully
compatible with the Unix version, and "COMPRESS -?" will give option
help. Versions of COMPRESS running under DOS are only be able to use
12 bit compression--use 16 bit mode under OS/2 and Unix exclusively!
(the LZW Hash table will get too big).

To take apart a TAR file, use the TAR utility. I ported this to OS/2
myself, and as a time-saving measure, "removed" some features.
Specifically, direct device access and multi-volume TAR files DO NOT
WORK.

COM, OBJ and EXE files are added and extracted in BINARY mode. Other
file extensions are presumed to be text files, and are converted to
and from Unix format as appropriate (stored in Unix format in the
TAR archive, and in DOS format when extracted). Other BINARY extensions
can be declared using the -U option. However, most Unix archives are
source code, and so this doesn't apply.

        [D:\]TAR -x -F ARCHIVE.TAR

will extract all files from ARCHIVE.TAR, re-creating the original
directory structure. Filenames are converted from Unix format to
DOS format as the extraction proceeds.

These utilities have been used to decompress and extract several
large FSF distribution archives, including GHOST.TAZ, with no problems.

Both TAR.EXE and COMPRESS.EXE have been "bound", and will work under
either OS/2 or DOS.

Have Fun!
Fred Weigel.