Subject: Summary: tar files (Part I)

From: Jan Labanowski <[email-masked]> (by way of [email-masked] (Grant Handford))
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 02:29:56 -0800 (PST)

Dear CCLer's,

        Here is Part I of my summary concerning the conversion of tar files
to usable form.  It is designed especially for those who, like myself, did
not know how to uudecode tar files like the ones e-mailed to us on the CCL
concerning the special announcement about the new Gaussian program which
included a seven part series of program segments (tar.uu files).

        I wish to thank all of you who replied. It was very much appreciated.

Sincerely,
Grant.
E-mail:- [email-masked]

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> I am just getting
> started at using a computer for e-mail, Internet, etc.  I need to know how
> to convert compressed tar files into usable form.

On the machine running UNIX you can do following:

   1) Make a directory (say myprog) which you want to be a top of the tree
      of directories for a tar archive
           mkdir myprog

   2) Copy a compressed tar file (i.e., file which has the *.tar.Z or
      *.tar.gz extension, e.g., myprog.tar.Z or myprog.tar.gz)
      to the myprog directory

   3) Execute the command:
         a) for a *.tar.Z archive
               zcat myprog.tar.Z | tar xvof -
         a) for a *.tar.gz
               gunzip -c myprog.tar.gz

and the files from the archive will stored under the myprog directory.

Note on uudecoding. If you receive a uuencoded file (sorry....) via e-mail,
i.e.,  a file which has a following format:

then you know it is an uuencoded file, i.e., a file, usually binary,
which was converted to a special format so the electronic mail does
not mess it up (plain electronic mail, in principle, would alter most
binary files which contain unprintable characters). To convert the
uuencoded file into an original binary file, you need to save it,
e.g., as myprog.uu, and the use the uudecode program as:
    uudecode myprog.uu
This will recreate the original binary file, myprog.tar.Z in our case.
Sometimes larger uuencoded files are split into smaller messages.
In this case, you need to join all the pieces together in the order
specified, delete all e-mail headers, and leave no gaps. Only then you
can use uudecode. Of course, there are e-mail programs that will do
it for you automaticall, and tools which will make it easier, but
if you do not have them, you still can do it by hand.

Jan Labanowski
[email-masked]

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Thanks again,

Sincerely,
Grant.
E-mail:- [email-masked]