GNU tar --exclude and --exclude-from should work for extracting as well

[Mookie]

Hi folks,

tar (GNU tar) 1.13  Solaris 7 SPARC sun4m

If I backup my whole file system to tape and wish to restore everything
back to another disk except for a few directories I should be able to do:

gtar -xvf /dev/rmt/1c --exclude=usr/local --exclude=var

I've tried a variety of syntax for --exclude:

    --exclude=var
    --exclude=./var
    --exclude=/var
    --exclude=var/
    --exclude=/var/
    --exclude=var*

but none work. The man page says:

    `--exclude=PATTERN'
         When performing operations, `tar' will skip files that match
         PATTERN.  .

The only variation that has actually worked is --exclude=*

In that case, (using --show-omitted-dirs), it will say "Omitting foo" for
all files/directories, but then it's slightly useless from a functional sense.

My gtar -tvf is:
    lost+found/
    lost+found/#173894/
    var/
    var/sadm/
    var/sadm/install/
    var/sadm/install/admin/
    var/sadm/install/admin/default
    var/sadm/install/logs/
    var/sadm/install/logs/SUNWlicsw
    var/sadm/install/logs/SCHILYscg
    var/sadm/install/contents
    var/sadm/install/.lockfile
    [...]

A demo:
# gtar -xvvf /dev/rmt/1c --exclude=var --exclude=./var --exclude=/var 
--exclude=var/ \
                         --exclude=/var/ --exclude=var\* --exclude=var.\*
    drwx------ root/root         0 1998-12-22 23:30 lost+found/
    drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2000-01-09 15:16 lost+found/#173894/
    drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2000-06-24 11:07 var/
    drwxr-xr-x root/sys          0 2000-09-10 13:19 var/sadm/
    dr-xr-xr-x bin/bin           0 2000-10-01 15:57 var/sadm/install/
    dr-xr-xr-x bin/bin           0 1998-12-22 23:40 var/sadm/install/admin/
    -r--r--r-- root/sys        209 1999-12-29 02:17 
var/sadm/install/admin/default
    dr-xr-xr-x bin/bin           0 2000-09-21 22:50 var/sadm/install/logs/

Can this be fixed for the next version of tar please.

Thanks,
Mark
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