tarfile woes

Gustavo Niemeyer niemeyer at conectiva.com
Thu Aug 21 17:20:20 EDT 2003


>  - bzip2 compressed files cannot be read from a "fake" (StringIO) file
>    object, only from real files. This is (imho) unbelievably ugly, as
>    I have the file already in a string. I really do not want to read it
>    a second time. Or a third time, when the user finally decides that
>    she wants the archive actually unpacked (second was TOC listing).
>
>  - It does not handle compressed (.Z) archives. Of course there's
>    noone to blame. The gzip utility (which is used by gnu tar) handles
>    this ancient algorithm, but apparently, zlib does not. :-(

    >>> import bz2
    >>> print bz2.decompress.__doc__
    decompress(data) -> decompressed data

    Decompress data in one shot. If you want to decompress data
    sequentially, use an instance of BZ2Decompressor instead.

    >>> import gzip
    >>> print gzip.__doc__
    Functions that read and write gzipped files.

    The user of the file doesn't have to worry about the compression,
    but random access is not allowed.

    >>> import tarfile
    >>> print tarfile.open.__doc__
    Open a tar archive for reading, writing or appending. Return
	       an appropriate TarFile class.

	       mode:
	       'r'          open for reading with transparent compression
	       'r:'         open for reading exclusively uncompressed
	       'r:gz'       open for reading with gzip compression
	       'r:bz2'      open for reading with bzip2 compression
	       'a' or 'a:'  open for appending
	       'w' or 'w:'  open for writing without compression
	       'w:gz'       open for writing with gzip compression
	       'w:bz2'      open for writing with bzip2 compression
	       'r|'         open an uncompressed stream of tar blocks for reading
	       'r|gz'       open a gzip compressed stream of tar blocks
	       'r|bz2'      open a bzip2 compressed stream of tar blocks
	       'w|'         open an uncompressed stream for writing
	       'w|gz'       open a gzip compressed stream for writing
	       'w|bz2'      open a bzip2 compressed stream for writing

-- 
Gustavo Niemeyer
http://niemeyer.net





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