?Figlet

In article <39b185$ch...@hydra.cs.hope.edu>,
Darrick Brown <dbr...@cs.hope.edu> wrote:
>bdh...@eos.ncsu.edu wrote:
>
>: I'm having a bit of trouble with Figlet, that program
>: we have all come to know and love. Anyway I ftp'd to the
>: official Figlet site (ftp.isu.edu) and downloaded the
>: compressed tarred version. I uncompressed it, and ran
>
>: tar -x figlet2.1.1.tar
       ~~~~

>
>: on it. Here's it what it gave me.
>
>: tar: Can't open:  /dev/rmt0h
>: /dev/rmt0h: No such device or address
>: tar: Please press RETURN  to retry
>
The problem there is that you've left off the -f switch.  Tar, by default, 
looks for a tape backup system, and to use it on a normal file, you have to
tell it that.  Try: tar -xf figlet2.1.1.tar

try     tar xvf figlet2.1.1.tar

the f is to indicate a file name follows and not a /dev/???
---
*****************************************************************************

Chip Guest     ////    cgu...@lmsc.lockheed.com

******************************************************************************

On Mon, 7 Nov 1994, Chip Guest 52-V3 (408) 742-3460 wrote:
> try     tar xvf figlet2.1.1.tar
> 
> the f is to indicate a file name follows and not a /dev/???


Yep, near enough. tar is for backing up to tape drives(I think), but it 
can also be used for file archives, much the same way as programs like lha.
not sure if tar xvf <filename> works, I need a '-' :

tar -xf <filename> extracts the file (the -v flag is for verbose output)
				  and if you have a slow link to a remote
				server, I would recommend leaving this out
				as some archives are huge.
just in case you want to back up an archive:
tar -cf <archive_name.tar> <directory/file_list> creates an archive for ya.


Nick