tar: Sparse Formats
1
1 Storing Sparse Files
1 ====================
1
1 The notion of sparse file, and the ways of handling it from the point of
1 view of GNU 'tar' user have been described in detail in ⇒sparse.
1 This chapter describes the internal format GNU 'tar' uses to store such
1 files.
1
1 The support for sparse files in GNU 'tar' has a long history. The
1 earliest version featuring this support that I was able to find was
1 1.09, released in November, 1990. The format introduced back then is
1 called "old GNU" sparse format and in spite of the fact that its design
1 contained many flaws, it was the only format GNU 'tar' supported until
1 version 1.14 (May, 2004), which introduced initial support for sparse
1 archives in PAX archives (⇒posix). This format was not free from
1 design flaws, either and it was subsequently improved in versions 1.15.2
1 (November, 2005) and 1.15.92 (June, 2006).
1
1 In addition to GNU sparse format, GNU 'tar' is able to read and
1 extract sparse files archived by 'star'.
1
1 The following subsections describe each format in detail.
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