tar(4)tar(4)NAMEtar - format of tar tape archive
DESCRIPTION
The header structure produced by (see tar(1)) is as follows (the array
size defined by the constants is shown on the right):
All characters are represented in ASCII. There is no padding used in
the header block; all fields are contiguous.
The fields magic, uname, and gname are null-terminated character
strings. The fields name, linkname, and prefix are null-terminated
character strings except when all characters in the array contain non-
null characters, including the last character. The version field is
two bytes containing the characters (zero-zero). The typeflag contains
a single character. All other fields are leading-zero-filled octal
numbers in ASCII. Each numeric field is terminated by one or more
space or null characters.
The name and the prefix fields produce the pathname of the file. The
hierarchical relationship of the file is retained by specifying the
pathname as a path prefix, with a slash character and filename as the
suffix. If the prefix contains non-null characters, prefix, a slash
character, and name are concatenated without modification or addition
of new characters to produce a new pathname. In this manner, pathnames
of at most 256 characters can be supported. If a pathname does not fit
in the space provided, the format-creating utility notifies the user of
the error, and no attempt is made to store any part of the file,
header, or data on the medium.
SEE ALSOtar(1)STANDARDS CONFORMANCEtar(4)
