Re: prefer local files to network connections

[Paul Eggert]

On 2024-01-30 10:09, Sergey Poznyakoff wrote:
> Hi Karl!
>
> > I suggest that tar check if a file exists before trying to make a
> > network connection. This would eliminate the need for --force-local in
> > (I expect) most cases. As in:
>
> Nice idea.  I'll implement it.

Wait, does this mean 'tar -cf host:file ...' will overwrite the local 
file 'host:file' only if that file already exists? That sounds confusing.

The 'host:file' convention is already confusing, as this bug report is 
suggesting to me that I should put 'export TAR_OPTIONS=--force-local' 
into my .profile, much as I dislike having environment variables affect 
standard utilities. I'm not sure it's a good idea to make the convention 
even more confusing.

One possible minor improvement would be to say that file names starting 
with "/" or with "./" are never remote, even if they have colons in 
them. Though this likely wouldn't address the glitch that triggered 
Karl's bug report, at least it'd make it easier to write portable 
scripts that don't access the network unexpectedly.