I’m so baffled I had to ask – why this behaviour?

cd /var/www/html
tar czf ~/package.tgz admin/* api/* mobile/*

I do this, and the resulting package doesn’t include a couple of hidden files – api/.htaccess and admin/.htaccess. However…

cd /var/www/html
tar czf ~/package.tgz *

This time the hidden .htaccess files are there.

Does anybody have enlightenment to offer as to why?

  • nous@programming.devEnglish
    251·
    1 month ago

    * in your commands is expanded by the shell before tar sees them. It also does not expand hidden files.

    So when you do admin/* the shell expands to all non hidden files inside admin. Which does not include admin/.htaccess. So tar is never told to archive this file, only the other non hidden files and folders. It will still archive hidden files and folders nested deeper though.

    In the second example * expands to admin and the other does which are not hidden at that level. Then tar can open these dirs and recursivly archive all files and folders including the hidden ones.

    You can see what commands actually get executed after any shell expansions if you run set -x first. Then set +x to turn that off again.

    Here is an example using ls:

    $ set -x; ls -A foo/*; ls -A *; set +x
+ ls --color=tty -A foo/baz
foo/baz
+ ls --color=tty -A foo
.bar  baz
+ set +x
  • Onno (VK6FLAB)@lemmy.radio
    17·
    1 month ago

    You don’t need the wildcard, and as others have pointed out, it doesn’t include "hidden " dot files by default.

    tar -czf ~/package.tgz admin api mobile

  • balsoft@lemmy.ml
    10·
    1 month ago

    Ah yes, one of the biggest bugs-later-turned-design-mistakes of UNIX. This is not tar, this is your shell; you always need to use both * and .* for a wildcard to match all files in directory - e.g. tar czf ~/package.tgz admin/* admin/.* api/* api/.* mobile/* mobile/.*

    • tasankovasara@sopuli.xyzOP
      4·
      1 month ago

      Thanks - this is what I did with a ‘you had one job’ look beaming at the terminal after realising the hidden files were missed and indeed it did the trick.

    • BCsven@lemmy.ca
      1·
      1 month ago

      Could this be made easier by setting globstar or dotglob options, to include hidden files but not try to grab . and … Directory files

  • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
    5·
    1 month ago

    This is potentially a great ‘weeder’ question for junior Unix admin interviews, as it requires some knowledge about shell globbing and tar dir traversal.

    I admit it took me a sec (and a second read) before I got it, so it was a fun “hey what” exercise.

    Excellent question.

    • neclimdul@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 month ago

      Dang as soon as you said globbing I realized what had happened but didn’t see it right away either

  • T4V0@lemmy.pt
    61·
    1 month ago

    Probably due to wildcard expansion by the shell. Use dot (.) instead of asterisk (*).