[techtalk] Tar file splitting

[Laurel Fan]

Excerpts from linuxchix: 17-Nov-99 Re: [techtalk] Tar file spl.. by
Vinnie Chassot at george.he 
> I guess split would work, but I"m not sure that it would work after
> compressing (a tar file of ascii files is mostly ascii [completely? I
> don't actually know the file format standard, this is just what i"ve
> noticed poking around], but a gzip file is very binary and I assume a
> compress'd one is too, and I"m not sure if I"d use the split/cat combo
> with a binary...split/mv might work okay....) 

It should work... split with the -b option works fine with binaries, and
cat usually works fine for anything split on byte boundaries.  There
might be problems moving between different architectures, though...

tar files are mostly ascii, except for archive members that are binary
(of course) and binary zeroes used for padding blocks to 512b. (info tar
formats standard). 

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