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diff --git a/content/2023/tar-is-for-tape-drive.md b/content/2023/tar-is-for-tape-drive.md deleted file mode 100644 index 59491a09..00000000 --- a/content/2023/tar-is-for-tape-drive.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,30 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: "Tar Is for Tape Drive" -category: engineering -abstract: Exploring IT history to understand current quirks -date: 2023-04-12T17:17:07+02:00 -year: 2023 -draft: false -tags: -- tar -- tarball -- Unix -- POSIX -- computer-history ---- -One of the things I never knew I wanted to know: - -> tar creates and manipulates streaming archive files. -> (source: man tar(1)) - -Tarball is a file standing for the drive: - -> A tar archive consists of a series of file objects, hence the popular term tarball, referencing how a tarball collects objects of all kinds that stick to its surface. -> (source: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarball_(computing))) - -This explains two things I never got about tar: -- It's slow. The tarball represents a physical tape, so to get a file from it, tar must virtually forward it to the needed position. -- It's not compressed, as otherwise, the computer would need to read the entire tape into memory, extract it and work on that. - -Tar is one of the things where computer archeology makes things clearer. Nowadays, we often forget that computers have a history and a lot of things we take for granted need to be invented. Many quirks can be understood if we explore the past a bit. - |