On Sep 16, 2008, at 3:30 AM, Brian Candler wrote: > Ara Howard wrote: >> IO.popen 'tar cfz -', 'w+' do |pipe| >> >> end >> >> and just send files down the pipe > > Uh?? > > "tar cfz -" creates a tarfile called "z" and tries to pack a file > called > "-" in it. > > "tar czf - file1 file2 file3" reads the named files from disk and > sends > the *output* to stdout. > > If you don't specify any files, then nothing is created: > > $ tar -czf - > tar: Cowardly refusing to create an empty archive > Try `tar --help' or `tar --usage' for more information. > > That's for gnu tar, maybe others work differently. However, as far > as I > know, you can't get tar to read the *content* of files on stdin - and > even if you could, how would you format them? That is, how would you > delimit the start and end of each file, and assign a name to each one? > -- > Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. > sorry. i misread the OPs question. tar can only unpack to stdout, not create from stdin. a @ http://codeforpeople.com/ -- we can deny everything, except that we have the possibility of being better. simply reflect on that. h.h. the 14th dalai lama