tar(4)							     Kernel Interfaces Manual							    tar(4)

NAME

       tar - format of tar tape archive

DESCRIPTION

       The header structure produced by (see tar(1)) is as follows (the array size defined by the constants is shown on the right):

       All characters are represented in ASCII.  There is no padding used in the header block; all fields are contiguous.

       The  fields magic, uname, and gname are null-terminated character strings.  The fields name, linkname, and prefix are null-terminated char-
       acter strings except when all characters in the array contain non-null characters, including the last character.  The version field is  two
       bytes  containing  the  characters  (zero-zero).  The typeflag contains a single character.  All other fields are leading-zero-filled octal
       numbers in ASCII.  Each numeric field is terminated by one or more space or null characters.

       The name and the prefix fields produce the pathname of the file.  The hierarchical relationship of the file is retained by  specifying  the
       pathname  as a path prefix, with a slash character and filename as the suffix.  If the prefix contains non-null characters, prefix, a slash
       character, and name are concatenated without modification or addition of new characters to produce a new pathname.  In this  manner,  path-
       names  of  at most 256 characters can be supported.  If a pathname does not fit in the space provided, the format-creating utility notifies
       the user of the error, and no attempt is made to store any part of the file, header, or data on the medium.

SEE ALSO

       tar(1)

STANDARDS CONFORMANCE

																	    tar(4)