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- From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
-
- > > 1) Data is not block oriented. This slows down processing...
- > I miss this one. It may slow things under MVS, but there's no reason
- > why reading less physical data should slow things down. Quite the
- > opposite.
-
- The problem being alluded to is that the data is not block-aligned. This
- is a bit of a performance pain when the disks are block-aligned, although
- tar's block alignment isn't going to help a lot if the disk blocks are bigger
- than tar's (which they normally are, nowadays).
-
- > > 2) There is no room left in the header. No customization
- > > possible (without also sending the customized program).
- > This is a major advantage. Save us from "custom standard' format. The
- > custom stuff belongs in the *file*, not the format (in my opinion).
-
- The point here is that you can customize tar to some degree *without*
- making it incompatible with the standard ones. (We did, for example.)
- This is not true of cpio, since there's no spare space in the header.
-
- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
- {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
-
- Volume-Number: Volume 11, Number 69
-
-