It's worse than just being XML.   The whole idea of tar and cpio was to fix the problem tp/stp had of putting the catalog at the front of the tape (archive) and thread the directory through out it.   Sigh...  if you don't learn from history, you are destined to repeat iot.

On Sat, Mar 7, 2020 at 6:12 PM Derek Fawcus <dfawcus+lists-coff@employees.org> wrote:
On Sat, Mar 07, 2020 at 05:05:52PM -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
> Dave -- please, let's not re-live 'tar-wars'   -- it's why the POSIX
> command is called 'pax' - God Bless USENIX for funding the original
> implementation and putting it in the public domain.

[snip]

> pax has a user interface that work either ways, and the USENIX public
> implementation can read both tape formats..
>
> Clem
>
> PS At Masscomp, I once wrote "car" but no one ever wrote "tpio".

and now we have xar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xar_%28archiver%29),
since obviously everything can be improved by a dose of XML ! ;-)

DF
_______________________________________________
COFF mailing list
COFF@minnie.tuhs.org
https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coff