tar has no index for quick lookup, tar extracts in quadratic time, stuff like that. I mean, even zip can extract a 1 MB file in a second from a 5 GB archive, tar needs to extract the whole thing.
No “magic byte” either, making life hard for mime-tooling.
To be fair, it was made for tape backups.
tar lets you just pack files together with no compression at near instant speed
cat does so too. Add a index with metadata and a separator bit between the files and you almost have a tar but better in some areas.
“tar extracts in quadratic time, stuff like that”. Is that what your favorite clanker told you? If that’s the case, why is uncompressed tar almost instant in practice when others take many seconds? Or compressed tars in the same time neighborhood than any other tool?
Who does “quick lookups” in an arcived file? At most a content listing and then parse/grep whatever you want.
About cat: Sure bud, but go and reconstruct a folder after you cated it.
Dumb and inefficient but simple enough to not care about your newfangled “security exploits”.
Do you have any foundation for your claim?
Dumb is a feature: do one thing and do it well. Inefficient? BS.
Here a qick comparison
tar has no index for quick lookup, tar extracts in quadratic time, stuff like that. I mean, even zip can extract a 1 MB file in a second from a 5 GB archive, tar needs to extract the whole thing.
No “magic byte” either, making life hard for mime-tooling.
To be fair, it was made for tape backups.
catdoes so too. Add a index with metadata and a separator bit between the files and you almost have a tar but better in some areas.“tar extracts in quadratic time, stuff like that”. Is that what your favorite clanker told you? If that’s the case, why is uncompressed tar almost instant in practice when others take many seconds? Or compressed tars in the same time neighborhood than any other tool?
Who does “quick lookups” in an arcived file? At most a content listing and then parse/grep whatever you want.
About cat: Sure bud, but go and reconstruct a folder after you cated it.