Difference between tar and star

tar

I've been learning about the syntax and usage of tar and came across star.

I've read this paragraph from the star manpage:

Star includes the first free implementation of POSIX.1-2001 extended tar headers. The POSIX.1-2001 extended tar headers define a new standard way for going beyond the limitations of the historic tar format. They allow (among others) to archive all UNIX time stamps in sub-second resolution, files of arbitrary size and filenames without length limitation using UNICODE UTF-8 coding for best exchange compatibility.

and I'm wondering if this still remains true at the present time, or whether tar has caught up in this aspect.

Most of the documentation that I've found is at least a decade old. I've also looked at the tar changelog over the last 10 years and can't find anything that states that it follows the above "extended tar headers".

Best Answer

By comparing these two pages1,2 I found the following:

  • tar supports the POSIX.1-2001 extended tar headers, you can specify this format using
    the --posix switch or --format=posix

  • tar also supports a diff command using --diff or --compare, similar to star.

  • I couldn't find any significant differences between tar and star...

... So I guess I can lay my mind to rest.

1: http://linux.die.net/man/1/star
2: http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/tar.html

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