OT: why tar is strange (was: The REALLY bad thing about Python lists ..)

[Garry Hodgson]

Grant Griffin wrote:

> Well, I'm an old DOS man, so I tend to flatter myself that I have a
> balanced view of the command-line-versus-GUI thing.

that's a bad assumption to make.  the DOS command shell is so
pitifully lame that it doesn't serve well as a basis for comparison.
it'd be like me flaming GUI's based on my windows 2.0 experience.

> But when extracting
> from someone _else's_ archive, I think the GUI thing clearly has the
> command-line approach beat.

maybe.  i type "Unpack archive-name" in a shell window, and i'm done.
"Unpack" being a trivial python or ksh (i forget which, and don't care)
script which figures out the right thing to do.

-- 
Garry Hodgson                   Every night 
garry at sage.att.com                a child is born
Software Innovation Services        is a Holy Night.
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