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Top Forums UNIX for Beginners Questions & Answers Arg list too long error while performing tar and zip operation Post 303031456 by Corona688 on Thursday 28th of February 2019 01:33:52 PM
Old 02-28-2019
Quote:
Originally Posted by stomp
If your tar supports -T / --files-from:

Code:
ls xyz* | tar --files-from=- --create --file ${abc}/backup_file.tar

...or short...

Code:
ls xyz* | tar -cT - -f ${abc}/backup_file.tar

See: Linux Manpages Online - man.cx manual pages
Cramming too many arguments into ls doesn't stop them from being too many arguments. When this happens you have to give up shell globbing.

Code:
rm -f backup_file.tar
ls | grep "^xyz" | xargs tar -rcf backup_file.tar
gzip backup_file.tar

xargs will run tar several times, as many as needed, to append every file to the tarball. (This is why there's an rm -- so that if you run it twice, it will start over instead of making the existing tarball bigger.)

This is less efficient than -T or cpio, especially in that it can't compress the tarball until after it's finished. But if those aren't options, this is how you can do it.
 

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tar(n)								 Tar file handling							    tar(n)

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

NAME
tar - Tar file creation, extraction & manipulation SYNOPSIS
package require Tcl 8.4 package require tar ?0.4? ::tar::contents tarball ::tar::stat tarball ?file? ::tar::untar tarball args ::tar::get tarball fileName ::tar::create tarball files args ::tar::add tarball files args ::tar::remove tarball files _________________________________________________________________ DESCRIPTION
::tar::contents tarball Returns a list of the files contained in tarball. The order is not sorted and depends on the order files were stored in the archive. ::tar::stat tarball ?file? Returns a nested dict containing information on the named ?file? in tarball, or all files if none is specified. The top level are pairs of filename and info. The info is a dict with the keys "mode uid gid size mtime type linkname uname gname devmajor devminor % ::tar::stat tarball.tar foo.jpg {mode 0644 uid 1000 gid 0 size 7580 mtime 811903867 type file linkname {} uname user gname wheel devmajor 0 devminor 0} ::tar::untar tarball args Extracts tarball. -file and -glob limit the extraction to files which exactly match or pattern match the given argument. No error is thrown if no files match. Returns a list of filenames extracted and the file size. The size will be null for non regular files. Leading path seperators are stripped so paths will always be relative. -dir dirName Directory to extract to. Uses pwd if none is specified -file fileName Only extract the file with this name. The name is matched against the complete path stored in the archive including directo- ries. -glob pattern Only extract files patching this glob style pattern. The pattern is matched against the complete path stored in the archive. -nooverwrite Dont overwrite files that already exist -nomtime Leave the file modification time as the current time instead of setting it to the value in the archive. -noperms In Unix, leave the file permissions as the current umask instead of setting them to the values in the archive. % foreach {file size} [::tar::untar tarball.tar -glob *.jpg] { puts "Extracted $file ($size bytes)" } ::tar::get tarball fileName Returns the contents of fileName from the tarball % set readme [::tar::get tarball.tar doc/README] { % puts $readme } ::tar::create tarball files args Creates a new tar file containing the files. files must be specified as a single argument which is a proper list of filenames. -dereference Normally create will store links as an actual link pointing at a file that may or may not exist in the archive. Specifying this option will cause the actual file point to by the link to be stored instead. % ::tar::create new.tar [glob -nocomplain file*] % ::tar::contents new.tar file1 file2 file3 ::tar::add tarball files args Appends files to the end of the existing tarball. files must be specified as a single argument which is a proper list of filenames. -dereference Normally add will store links as an actual link pointing at a file that may or may not exist in the archive. Specifying this option will cause the actual file point to by the link to be stored instead. ::tar::remove tarball files Removes files from the tarball. No error will result if the file does not exist in the tarball. Directory write permission and free disk space equivalent to at least the size of the tarball will be needed. % ::tar::remove new.tar {file2 file3} % ::tar::contents new.tar file3 BUGS, IDEAS, FEEDBACK This document, and the package it describes, will undoubtedly contain bugs and other problems. Please report such in the category tar of the Tcllib SF Trackers [http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=12883]. Please also report any ideas for enhancements you may have for either package and/or documentation. KEYWORDS
archive, tape archive, tar tar 0.4 tar(n)
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