Frequently, you will find yourself wanting to determine exactly what a particular archive contains. You can use the --list (-t) operation to get the member names as they currently appear in the archive, as well as various attributes of the files at the time they were archived. For example, you can examine the archive `collection.tar' that you created in the last section with the command,
$ tar --list --file=collection.tar
The output of tar would then be:
blues folk jazz
@FIXME{we hope this will change. if it doesn't, need to show the creation of bfiles somewhere above!!! : }
The archive `bfiles.tar' would list as follows:
./birds baboon ./box
Be sure to use a --file=archive-name (-f archive-name) option just as with --create (-c) to specify the name of the archive.
If you use the --verbose (-v) option with `--list', then
tar will print out a listing reminiscent of `ls -l',
showing owner, file size, and so forth.
If you had used --verbose (-v) mode, the example above would look like:
$ tar --list --verbose --file=collection.tar folk -rw-rw-rw- myself user 62 1990-05-23 10:55 folk
You can specify one or more individual member names as arguments when
using `list'. In this case, tar will only list the
names of members you identify. For example, tar --list
--file=afiles.tar apple would only print `apple'.
@FIXME{we hope the relevant aspects of this will change:}Because
tar preserves paths, file names must be specified as they appear
in the archive (ie., relative to the directory from which the archive
was created). Therefore, it is essential when specifying member names
to tar that you give the exact member names. For example,
tar --list --file=bfiles birds would produce an error message
something like `tar: birds: Not found in archive', because there is
no member named `birds', only one named `./birds'. While the
names `birds' and `./birds' name the same file, member
names are compared using a simplistic name comparison, in which an exact
match is necessary. See section Absolute File Names.
However, tar --list --file=collection.tar folk would respond
with `folk', because `folk' is in the archive file
`collection.tar'. If you are not sure of the exact file name, try
listing all the files in the archive and searching for the one you
expect to find; remember that if you use `--list' with no file
names as arguments, tar will print the names of all the members
stored in the specified archive.
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