UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

I have a sample directory structire like following

# pwd
/user/test

and I have files like following

out.txt
A/a.txt
B/b.txt
C/c.txt
(A,B,C are directories )

# tar cvf test.tar *
a A/a.txt 1 blocks
a B/b.txt 1 blocks
a C/c.txt 1 blocks
a out.txt 1 blocks

But whenever I give
# tar cvf test.tar *.txt
a out.txt 1 blocks

My question is when I give "tar cvf test.tar *.txt", why it is not copying all the files like *.txt recursively. How can I tar recursively using wild card.

Regards,
Ronald.

Hi ronald_brayan,
When you give a command like: 'tar cvf test.tar *.txt', what happens is that the shell parses the entire input line. It sees that you are supplying a "*.txt" pattern, so it checks in the current directory for that pattern and replaces that pattern with any files that it finds.

So after the shell is done with the parsing, the command that is executed is:
'tar cvf test.tar out.txt'

In the second case your pattern is just "*". So the shell replaces it with all the files and directories in the current directory. So the command that is executed is the same as:
'tar cvf test.tar A B C out.txt'.

The directories A, B and C and the file out.txt are sent in as args to the tar command, and tar includes any files inside directories in the tar archive. If you put in any more files in the A, B or C directories and run the tar with '*' as the arg, you will find that those files are in the tar archive as well.

Hi blowtorch,

Thanks for your prompt reply.

Is there a way to tar the files from sub-directory also for files like (*.csv).

Because, I can not use * while tar .

Regards,
Ronald.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that. You can use find and xargs to do that.

Code:

find . -name *.csv|xargs tar cvf tarfilename.tar

Just know that xargs will handle a very large number of arguments by splitting them up into groups. This won't do what you want. Each new group of files will over write the previous one in the tar file.

Hi blowtorch,

Thanks a lot . It Worked.

Regards,
Ronald.