[PLUG] Tarball installation

[Russell Senior]

>>>>> "Stephen" == Stephen Liu <satimis at writeme.com> writes:

>> Isn't the - for stdin?
>> 
>> Like this gzip -cd xxx.tar.gz | tar xvf -

Stephen> What is the '-' (minus sign) after xvf for

This just goes to show that Zot wasn't completely off his rocker last
night when he suggested that newbie questions were potentially
valuable for providing new/lost perspective.  

As I watched the cascade of duplicate answers to this question, and
also while I was researching the correction to Jeme's "deprecation"
claim, I began to wonder what the _point_ of the "-f -" idiom was.  I
mean, it _is_ ubiquitous without a doubt.  I use it frequently, but is
it really necessary???  I mean, why _bother_ telling tar you are going
to specify a filename if you are just going to tell it to substitute
stdin/out?  Why can't you just say:

  tar c /tmp | tar tv

and have it do the right thing?  Turns out, at least for current GNU
tar's, you _can_.  Boggle.

This also ties in with the whole sqrt() optimization thing that Randal
noted last night.  There is one arguably good reason to leave it in,
even though it is probably horribly wasteful machine-cycle-wise, and
that is, pedagogically, to make it clear what you are doing.  In
short, optimizations can obfuscate.

-- 
Russell Senior         ``The two chiefs turned to each other.        
seniorr at aracnet.com      Bellison uncorked a flood of horrible       
                         profanity, which, translated meant, `This is
                         extremely unusual.' ''