15-Years

Posted on 2013.02.04 at 00:00

Alt Text: I don't know what's worse--the fact that after 15 years of using tar I still can't keep the flags straight, or that after 15 years of technological advancement I'm still mucking with tar flags that were 15 years old when I started.

I started my current career path in 1998. My reply to the above was, "15 years? has is been that long? so this is what its like to turn into an old man..." And yes, if the modern keyboard hasn't changed much since the iron horse was a new idea 200+ years ago, what makes us think tape archive flags are going to be updated anytime soon?

le sigh

8 comments

Comments:

schpydurx at 2013-02-05 02:46 (UTC) (Link)

The question is: can you do better than Rob?

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ehowton at 2013-02-05 15:35 (UTC) (Link)

Awkwardly enough most of the commenters on the LJ RSS feed also thought that was "the" question and went on to answer as ornately or as simplistically as they though amusing.

To answer your question independently of the missed context, yes. But I almost only ever use 6 or 7 flags, two of which are always static. Furthermore the way I flag them has since been deprecated with GNU but old habits and backward compatibility make that a non-issue :)

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schpydurx at 2013-02-05 16:12 (UTC) (Link)

I see your point about others missing the point. I myself would have went with "tar -xvf *tar" for much the same reason: these are the flags I most commonly use and it is the most simplistic form of tar that I use.

We had special fun with this comic at work (Book Systems). A guy that got fired during my absence was nammed Rob. He was something of a Stallman clone and would drag out our Code Review sessions with arcane *nix minutia.

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ehowton at 2013-02-05 16:26 (UTC) (Link)

"tar -xvf *tar"
And this is what

drax0r the minimalist would ride me about - GNU no longer requires the dash, and given his effort-level extremism, you can see where that would be problematic!

He...would drag out our Code Review sessions with arcane *nix minutia.
Ugh. I try to not be that guy. Good riddance, am I right?

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schpydurx at 2013-02-05 16:45 (UTC) (Link)

I didn't know what GNU no longer requires the dash. Interesting tidbit.

It's bittersweet for me. I learned a lot about vim, regex and shell scripting from him. On the other hand, since his expertise had been ignored for years, he had lost the enthusiasm needed to perform his job. And when he was in a funk–which is to say, most of the time–he wasn't pleasant to be around.

He was also the anarchist in support of Ron Paul. I agreed with him on many subjects, but the Bilderberg/Alex Jones stuff was over-the-top for me.

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