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POSIX Compliance

@FIXME{must ask franc,ois about this. dan hagerty thinks this might be an issue, but we're not really sure at this time. dan just tried a test case of mixing up options' orders while the variable was set, and there was no problem...}

We make some of our recommendations throughout this book for one reason in addition to what we think of as "good sense". The main additional reason for a recommendation is to be compliant with the POSIX standards. If you set the shell environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT, GNU tar will force you to adhere to these standards. Therefore, if this variable is set and you violate one of the POSIX standards in the way you phrase a command, for example, GNU tar will not allow the command and will signal an error message. You would then have to reorder the options or rephrase the command to comply with the POSIX standards.

There is a chance in the future that, if you set this environment variable, your archives will be forced to comply with POSIX standards, also. No GNU tar extensions will be allowed.


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