Tar exit codes

[Mac_minator]

Can someone give me the list of tar exit codes?
This is for standard /bin/tar.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

You can probably rely on 0=success; 1=failure in keeping with all standard Unix utilities. Otherwise, 'tar' reports errors with messages.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Steven Schweda]

> This is for standard /bin/tar.

Too bad. The documentation for GNU "tar"
seems to be better along this axis.

http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/
http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_node/tar_33.html#IDX28

[Dennis Handly]

>JRF: You can probably rely on 0=success; 1=failure in keeping with all standard Unix utilities.

Don't you mean >0 or non-zero is failure? That's what rm(1) and mkdir(1) say.

[whiteknight]

Hi Mac,


You should concentrate on the error message accompanying the non-zero exit code

WK

[William Donnelly]

On my HP system, tar exits with a variety of exit codes (right now, I'm getting an exit code of "5"). I think what folks are asking for is an explanation of what each error code means, specifically. The tar command might be buried inside a massive build script or something, where the actual output is not readily available.

[Dennis Handly]

>William: tar exits with a variety of exit codes (right now, I'm getting an exit code of 5). I think what folks are asking for is an explanation of what each error code means

Since they aren't documented, you can't attach any meaning to the different exit status.
(You didn't see this but from the source 5 means only non-fatal errors occurred.)