[SOLVED] problem with tar and "--exclude" option

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Thu, 13 Apr 2006, Glenn L. McGrath wrote:

> On Wed, 12 Apr 2006 07:28:26 -0400 (EDT)
> "Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday at mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> >   should it really be this non-intuitive and different from GNU
> > tar behaviour?
>
> Ideally no, but its one of those features thats a bit fiddly and
> isnt used very often.

um ... what does that mean?  that it's coded and documented but
shouldn't be expected to work properly?

> Busybox tar also supports the --exclude-from option, -X where you
> specify a file that contains a list of files to be excluded, maybe
> that would have worked closer to what you expected.

i *know* about the --exclude-from option.  if i *wanted* that option,
i would have *selected* that option.

forgive me for being a bit snippy at the moment but, having pored over
the code in BB pretty thoroughly for the last week or so, the only
idea that occurs to me at the moment is to toss all of it and start
from scratch, with at least a *few* basic coding standards in place.

i realize that's totally unrealistic so i'm going to pack it in for
the day and go home and drink heavily until the feeling passes.

rday