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GNU tar

6.3 Reading Names from a File

(This message will disappear, once this node revised.)

Instead of giving the names of files or archive members on the command line, you can put the names into a file, and then use the --files-from=file-of-names (-T file-of-names) option to tar. Give the name of the file which contains the list of files to include as the argument to `--files-from'. In the list, the file names should be separated by newlines. You will frequently use this option when you have generated the list of files to archive with the find utility.

--files-from=file name

-T file name

Get names to extract or create from file file name.

If you give a single dash as a file name for `--files-from', (i.e., you specify either `--files-from=-' or `-T -'), then the file names are read from standard input.

Unless you are running tar with `--create', you can not use both `--files-from=-' and `--file=-' (`-f -') in the same command.

@quote-arg

The following example shows how to use find to generate a list of files smaller than 400K in length and put that list into a file called `small-files'. You can then use the `-T' option to tar to specify the files from that file, `small-files', to create the archive `little.tgz'. (The `-z' option to tar compresses the archive with gzip; see section 8.2.1 Creating and Reading Compressed Archives for more information.)

$ find . -size -400 -print > small-files $ tar -c -v -z -T small-files -f little.tgz

@quote-arg

NUL Terminated File Names