TAR(Tape Archive)

Synopsis
tar -c[#sbfNIjSvwlzU] [blocking_factor] [archivefile] [-V volpat] [file...] [-C pathname] [file...]
tar -r[#sbfNIjSvwlU] [blocking_factor] [archivefile] [-V volpat] [file...] [-C pathname] [file...]
tar -t[#sbfNIjSvzU] [blocking_factor] [archivefile] [-V volpat] [file ...]
tar -x[#sbfNIjSvwpmozU] [blocking_factor] [archivefile] [-V volpat] [file ...]

Description

tar manipulates archives. An archive is a single file that contains the complete contents of a set
of other files; an archive preserves the directory hierarchy that contained the original files, in a
manner similar to cpio. The name tar was derived from Tape ARchiver; however, you can use
archives with any medium, including diskettes.

This version of the tar utility writes and reads the original tar format from UNIX systems as
well as the USTAR format defined by the POSIX (IEEE P1003.1) standards group. It can also
save and restore additional Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista attributes.

When tar adds a sparse file to an archive, it stores it as a non-sparse file but also stores the
sparse attribute. When a file with a sparse attribute is extracted on a NTFS file system (which
supports sparse files), the file is extracted as a sparse file. On other file systems, a warning is
given and it is extracted as a non-sparse file. However, if the -w option is given, tar prompts you
as to whether you want to extract the file as a non-sparse file or skip it. Sparse archive files are
never created because most tapes, floppy disks, and other archiving media cannot understand
them. It is recommended that you compress any archive which contain files with the sparse
attribute set to keep the size of the archive reasonable.

Primary Options

The four forms of the command shown in the synopsis represent the main functions of tar . You
must specify one of these primary options as the first character of an option string.

-c creates an archive. This command writes each named file into a newly-created archive.
Directories recursively include all components. If - appears in place of any file name, tar reads
the standard input for a list of files, one per line. This allows other commands to generate lists of
files for tar to archive.
-r writes the named files to the end of the archive. It is possible to have more than one copy of
a file in an archive using this method. To use this form of the command with a tape, it must be
possible to backspace the tape.
-t displays a table of contents. This display contains the names of all the files in the archive,
one per line. If you specify one or more files on the command line, tar prints only those file
names. Under the verbose (-v) option, more information about each archive member is printed,
in a format similar to that produced by ls -l.
Note: When you specify a compression option (-I, -j, or -z) with the -t option and the
specified archive is not compressed, an error message results and no table of contents is
displayed.

-x extracts files from an archive. tar extracts each named file to a file of the same name. If
you do not specify any files on the command line, tar extracts all files in the archive. This
extraction restores all file system attributes as controlled by other options.
Note: When you specify a compression option (-I, -j, or -z) with the -x option and the
specified archive is not compressed, an error message results and no files are extracted.
Secondary Options
-b sets the number of blocks used for tape archive read/write operations to blocking_factor. If
you specify -b, you must specify a blocking_factor argument. When reading from the tape
archive, tar automatically determines the blocking factor by trying to read the largest legal
blocking factor and using the actual number read to be the blocking_factor. For UNIX
compatibility, the largest valid value for blocking_factor is 20 blocks; in USTAR mode, it is 60
blocks. Blocks are typically 512 bytes, although some tape drives support other sizes.

Note: The -b, -C, -f, and -V options pull their associated option arguments in order from all
non-options arguments on the command line. For example, if -b comes before -f in the options
string, the blocking_factor must come before the filename.

-C pathname is an unusual option because it is specified in the middle of your file list. When
tar encounters a -C pathname option while archiving files, tar treats pathname as the current
directory and treats all following entries in your file list (including another -C) as being relative
to pathname.

Note: The -b, -C, -f, and -V options pull their associated option arguments in order from all
non-options arguments on the command line. For example, if -b comes before -f in the options
string, the blocking_factor must come before the filename.

-f uses the archivefile for the tape archive rather than the default device. If -f is used, the
archivefile argument must be specified. If archivefile is the character -, tar uses the standard
input for reading and the standard output for writing archives.

Note: The -b, -C, -f, and -V options pull their associated option arguments in order from all
non-options arguments on the command line. For example, if -b comes before -f in the options
string, the blocking_factor must come before the filename.

#s sets the default archive file name to a specific tape unit number and density. On Windows
systems, the default archive file name used by tar is /dev/mt. This option is the least general
way to override this default. For a more general method, use the -f option. The file name
generated by the #s option has the form /dev/mt#s on Windows systems. The # may be any digit
between 0 and 7, inclusive, to select the tape unit. The density selector s may be l(low),
m(medium), or h(high). On Windows systems, the density is ignored and the drive's default
density is used. For finer control over the density, use the -f or -V option with an archive name
such as -f /dev/nmtdqic-150; see tape for information on SCSI tape device names.
-I
-j

uses the bzip2 format to compress the tar archive being created. When you extract from a an
archived compressed using this format, tar automatically detects the bzip2 format and
decompresses it appropriately.

Note: Some versions of the tar utility on other systems may not automatically detect and
decompress bzip2-compressed archives. To extract files from these archives on such a system,
you should first decompress the archive using the bunzip2 utility.

-l complains if all links are not resolved when adding files to the tape archive.

-m does not restore a file's modification time stamp when extracting it from an archive. By
default, tar restores the time stamp from information contained in the archive.

-N handles additional Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista attributes for each file in the archive.
For each file in the archive, these additional attributes are stored in a file
.filename_MKS_ACL.ksh (note the leading dot). This option has no effect when the

TK_NTSECURITYINFO_OFF environment variable is set, because this environment variable

disables the use of access control lists.

For full details on the behavior of -N and the handling of the additional attributes, see Handling
Additional Attributes.

-o when extracting files, does not attempt to assign owner and group information to extracted
files. With this option, most operating systems assign your owner and group information to
extracted files by default.

-p when extracting, preserves the three high-order file attribute bits, exactly as in the archive.
Windows systems use these bits to indicate system, archive, and hidden attributes; see the stat
reference page for more details. On UNIX and POSIX-compliant systems, they indicate the set-
user-ID, set-group-ID, and saved-text attributes; to use -p on these systems, you must have
appropriate privileges. When -p is set, tar ignores the UMASK and restores the modes exactly
as in the archive.

Note: When this option is not specified, every file extracted on Windows systems has the
archive attribute turned on.

-S uses signed checksums in file headers when creating archives and interprets the checksums
in file headers when extracting archives as being signed checksums. This allows compatibility
with some UNIX systems with tar utilities that use such checksums rather than the POSIX
standard of unsigned checksums.
Note: Signed and unsigned checksums only differ when the checksum is higher than the signed
maximum (in which case, the signed checksum becomes negative) or when the file header
contains negative numbers. Archives which do not contain file headers with negative numbers,
and whose checksums are low enough that the signed and unsigned checksums do not differ, can
be read by all versions of tar. However, archives that were created using signed checksums and
have negative checksums (that is, it is larger than the signed maximum), or contain file headers
with negative numbers, cannot be read by versions of tar that cannot recognize signed
checksums. Similarly, when the -S option is specified, the MKS Toolkit version of tar cannot
read archives created using unsigned checksums if a checksum is larger than the signed
maximum or a file header contains negative numbers.

-U when creating a new tape archive with the -c option, forces tar to use the USTAR format.
The default format used when creating a new archive is the original UNIX tar format. When
you do not specify -c, tar determines whether or not the tape archive is in USTAR format by
reading it, so the U option does not affect file extraction. tar displays an error message for a
UNIX tar format file containing a bad file name; -U suppresses this message and still extracts
the data if the file name is acceptable in USTAR format.

-v displays each file name, along with the appropriate action key letter (a for add, x for extract)
as it processes the archive. With the -t form of the command, this option gives more detail about
each archive member being listed.

-V volpat provides automatic multi-volume support. tar writes output to files -- whose names
are formatted using volpat. Any occurrence of # in volpat is replaced by the current volume
number. When you invoke tar with this option, it asks you to insert the appropriate disk and
then hit return before it proceeds with the operation. With this option set, tar issues the same
sort of message when a write error or read error occurs on the archive. The reasoning is that this
kind of error means that tar has reached the end of the volume and should go on to a new one.

Note: The -b, -C, -f, and -V options pull their associated option arguments in order from all
non-options arguments on the command line. For example, if -b comes before -f in the options
string, the blocking_factor must come before the filename.

-w is used to confirm each operation, such as replacing or extracting. tar displays the
operation and the file involved. You can then confirm whether or not you want the operation to
take place. Typing in an affirmative answer (in the POSIX locale, one that begins with y or Y)
tells tar to do the operation; anything else tells tar to go on to the next operation.

-z performs compression. Output is at compression level 5. On input, any compression level

up to 9 is acceptable. In addition, -z expands compressed archives on input.

tar uses the gzip format to compress files.

Handling Additional Attributes

With the -N option, tar can handle saving and restoring additional Windows
NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista attributes. This option has no effect when the TK_NTSECURITYINFO_OFF
environment variable is set.

The additional information for each file in the archive is stored in a file named
.filename_MKS_ACL.ksh where filename is the name of the original file. This file (called a
special file) is used to restore the additional attributes when the original file (called a regular
file) is extracted. Archives containing special files are called enhanced archives.

When using -cN to create a new archive, for each file being added to the archive, tar also adds
the corresponding special file. The special file has the same modification timestamp as the
regular file and contains the chacl commands to restore the regular file's discretionary access
control list (DACL), chown commands to set the owner and group information, and a chmod
command to set the compressed attribute if the regular file has that attribute set.

Note: Special files are created as temporary files and then added to the archive with the
appropriate name. As a result, if a special file already exists when tar -cN (or -rN) is specified,
that special file is ignored.

You can use -xN to extract files from an enhanced archive. For each regular file retrieved from
the archive, the corresponding special file is also retrieved from the archive; the commands in
this special file are then applied to the regular file and the special file is deleted (from the disk,
but not from the archive).

Note: To properly restore the ownership and group information for files being extracted from
an enhanced archive, you must have the appropriate permissions as outlined in the chown
reference page.

When using -xN, the -p option (retain system, archive, and hidden attributes) is ignored, since all
attributes including read-only and compression are retained when when the archive is created
using -N. You can use the -o option (do not set owner) with -xN, but doing so may affect the
permission of users to access retrieved files.

When you use -x without -N on an enhanced archive, tar extracts all files (both regular and
special). Users with versions of MKS Toolkit that do not contain the -N feature of tar but do
contain the chacl command can still make use of the special files in an enhanced archive. Such
users can extract all the files in the archive with -x, and then use the find command to first
execute the special files to restore the DACLs for the regular files and then delete those special
files.

For information on how DACLs are restored, see Restoring DACLs.

Using -tN to display the table of contents of an enhanced archive displays only the regular files
in the archive, unless you also specify -v. tar -tvN displays both regular and special files as
does tar -t.
You can use -rN to append regular and special files to an existing archive. If the existing archive
is not an enhanced archive (that is, not created with tar -cN), the resulting archive is a hybrid,
where only some files in the archive have Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista attributes
associated with them. Similarly, by using tar -r, you can append regular files without a
corresponding special file to an existing enhanced archive.

Enhanced or hybrid archives to which files have been appended may include multiple copies of
regular or special files. The behavior of tar -xN is undefined in this context; files may be
inconsistent in the same way that is possible when multiple copies are included without the -N
option. Appending files to an existing archive is not recommended when the append operation
could result in multiple copies of a file in an archive.

Note: If tar is interrupted while restoring an enhanced archive using -N, special files (that is,
files of the form .filename_MKS_ACL.ksh may be left behind. You can delete these files with no
consequence.
Restoring DACLs

When enhanced archives are created using tar -cN, the discretionary access control lists
(DACLs) associated with file are preserved and these DACLs are restored when the files and
directories are restored.

However, the access controls may still be different on restoration than for the original file, if files
are retrieved to a location with different inheritable access control entries (ACEs) than the
original location. ACEs can either be assigned explicitly to a given file or can be inherited from a
higher directory. Access to a file depends both on the ACEs associated directly with that file, and
on the ACEs inherited from above.

Consider the following hierarchy, with ACEs assigned to files and directories. No two ACEs in
this example apply to the same user.

dir1 (ACE1) dir4 (ACE4)

|
dir2 (ACE2)
|
file3 (ACE3)

Let ACE1 and ACE2 be inherited. Now run tar -cN in directory dir1, saving dir2 and file3.
ACE2 is saved with dir2 and ACE3 with file3. Now restore this tar archive to dir4.

To guarantee that all users have exactly the same access to restored files, no matter where they
were restored in a directory tree, would require that all inheritance in the destination tree be
overridden and that all inheritances in the source directory tree be expanded. In this example, it
would require that ACE1 be assigned to dir2, and that ACE4 be ignored.

But this does not preserve the inheritance structure cleanly; restored files do not have the same
ACEs that the original files did. Even if these files were restored to their original location under
dir1, dir2 would have different ACEs, since ACE1 would have been assigned to dir2, and
ignored the version of ACE1 associated with dir1. While users would have the same access as in
the original case, the inheritance structure would be changed; in particular, dropping ACE1 from
dir1 would have no effect in the restored setting, while it obviously would have in the original
setting (and this gets far sloppier in a real example, where dir1 may contain many files, all of
which would need to be assigned ACE1).

Instead, tar simply saves ACE2 with dir2 and ACE3 with file3. If the files are restored to
dir1 (or any directory with inheritable ACE1), access rules are identical for saved and restored
files. However, if dir2 and file3 are instead restored to dir4, with inheritable ACE4, the access
rules are different.

This is right, though, in that the attributes have been retained for the files that tar saved and
restored. Consider an analogy, where files are saved from a read-only file system (for example, a
write-protected floppy disk), and restored to a read-write file system, such as the main hard
drive. Here it seems clear that each file should be restored with its original permissions (which
may well allow writing) instead of with read-only permission, based on an attribute that was set
higher in the directory structure. Similarly, let the permissions on dir2 and file3 be wide open.
If a user did not have read access to dir1 but did to dir4, restoring the archive to dir4 would
give this user access to these files.

Examples

The compression option provides a more efficient way of expressing:

tar -cvf - directory | mkszip >archive

as the one command line:

tar -cvzf archive directory

To identify all files that have been changed in the last week (7 days), and to archive them to a file
on diskette, you might type:

find directory -mtime -7 | tar -cvf a:archive -

Environment Variables

TK_ARCHIVE_CHARSET Contains the format to be used by cpio, tar, pax, vpax, zip, or unzip
when reading and writing file names to an archive. The value must be one of ASCII_ANSI,
ASCII_OEM, or UTF-8 (or their equivalents) as described in the File Character Formats section of
the unicode reference page.

When this variable is unset or it is set to a value other than those listed earlier, the default OEM
character set is used.
TK_ASPI_SUPPORT_OFF If set, MKS Toolkit utilities do not use ASPI support if it is present
and do not display warning messages if it is not.
TK_CLEAR_ARCHIVE_BIT

When set, all files that are written to archives are stored in the archive with the archive bit
cleared.

TK_NTLINKS_OFF MKS Toolkit supports hard links under Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista

on NTFS file systems. There is a slight loss of performance for this support. If you do not require
hard link support, you should set and export the environment variable TK_NTLINKS_OFF to
disable this support.

TK_NTSECURITYINFO_OFF MKS Toolkit supports Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista security

information on NTFS file systems. There is a slight loss of performance for this support. If you
do not require any security information, you should set and export the environment variable

TK_NTSECURITYINFO_OFF to disable this feature.

TK_UNIX_FILESYSTEM When this variable is set, the Enhanced UNIX Compatibility Mode is
on and the virtual file system is in use.

When the Enhanced UNIX Compatibility Mode is on, tar stores all path names in an archive as
virtual file system path names. This ensures that when such files are extracted on a system that
uses a single-rooted file system similar to virtual file system (such as UNIX or Linux), they are
put in the correct location. If you don't want virtual file system path names stored in the archives
you create, turn off the Enhanced UNIX Compatibility Mode by unsetting the

TK_UNIX_FILESYSTEM environment variable. As long as this environment variable is either

set when performing both backup and restore operations, or unset when performing both, using
tar to backup and restore should work as expected.

For details on the Enhanced UNIX Compatibility Mode and the virtual file system, see the EUCM
reference page.

Diagnostics

Possible exit status values:

0 Successful completion.
1 Failure due to any of the following:
— invalid option
— invalid command line arguments
— out of memory
— compression error
— failure on extraction
— failure on creation
Portability

x/OPEN Portability Guide 4.0. 4.2 BSD UNIX. Windows 2000. Windows XP. Windows Server
2003. Windows Vista.

On Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista, tar recognizes device names only if you apply the prefix
//./ to every device reference, as follows:

//./TAPE0 instead of TAPE0

We strongly recommend, however, that you specify tape devices as described under tape in the
MKS Toolkit Reference Manual. For example

/dev/mt0

has the same effect as specifying //./TAPE0, with the added advantage that tar automatically
senses and sets the correct block size of the tape.

The -N option and the related handling of additional Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista attributes
are MKS extensions. However, the resulting tar archives are in standard format and can be read
by standard implementations of tar.

The -U option is an extension to provide POSIX USTAR format compatibility.

The -p option is a common extension on BSD UNIX systems that is not available on UNIX
System V systems.

These two options as well as the -C, -V, and -z options are extensions to the x/OPEN standard.
The -u option specified in XPG is not currently supported.

Some features of the UNIX file system, such as links, have no analogs in the Windows file
system. The default archive file /dev/mt is not very useful unless a tape drive is installed.

Limits

There is no practical limitation on the size of a tar archive; however, individual files in an
archive must be less than 8 GB in size. Path names in the tape archive are normally restricted to a
maximum length of 100 bytes. However, in USTAR mode, path names may be up to 255 bytes
long. A description of the tape archive format is found in the tar file format reference page.

Warning

Before performing a raw disk input/output operation on a given disk, you must first read a
properly formatted disk of the same size in the same drive. For example, if you want to use a
1.44MB disk in drive A: for raw disk input, you first perform a command like ls or dir on a
different, properly formatted 1.44 MB disk in that drive. Once this is done, place the disk that
you want to use for raw disk input/output in the appropriate drive and issue the MKS Toolkit
command that you want to use.

Notes

The tar utility cannot save files larger than eight gigabytes in size in an archive. However, other
programs that extract files from tar archives may be unable to properly extract files larger than
two gigabytes and tar issues a warning to that effect when you attempt to save such a file.

The file permission modes of UNIX systems are not the same as those of Windows systems. In
particular, the archive, hidden, and system attributes of such a file mean something else on UNIX
systems. See the stat reference page for more details.

Availability

MKS Toolkit for System Administrators

MKS Toolkit for Developers
MKS Toolkit for Interoperability
MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers
MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers
MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers 64-Bit Edition

See Also

Commands: chacl, chmod, chown, cpio, dd, mkszip, mt, pax, uncompress, vpax

File Formats: cpio, tape, tar

Miscellaneous: stat
File Character Formats
Description

Besides normal ASCII text files, MKS Toolkit utilities also support UTF-8 file and 16-bit wide
Unicode files (that is, files using UTF-8 characters and 16-bit wide Unicode characters,
respectively). You can also include such characters on MKS Toolkit command lines and in path
names. MKS Toolkit utilities cannot handle non-OEM characters in file names unless the locale
supports double byte character (such as the Japanese locale). Consequently, even though the
utilities support UTF-8 and Unicode characters in files on all platforms, to achieve maximum
portability across all Windows platforms, all file names used in scripts for utilities like awk, sh,
csh and others should contain only ASCII characters from the OEM code page.

Normally, when a file is read by an MKS Toolkit utility, the utility determines its format and the
type of characters it contains and will use that same format for any output it produces. The key to
determining the file format is the multiple-byte marker usually found at the beginning of UTF-8
and Unicode files. This marker indicates whether the file's contents are Unicode big-endian,
Unicode little-endian, or UTF-8. However, when the multiple-byte marker is not present, you can
set the TK_STDIO_DEFAULT_INPUT_FORMAT and TK_STDIO_DEFAULT_OUTPUT_FORMAT
environment variables (see ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES) to force any input or output to be
treated as Unicode or UTF-8. Additionally, some utilities (such as cat, more, or tail) feature a
-U option that lets you specify how to handle input and output on the utility's command line.

When multiple input files are specified for a utility, the format of the output generated is
normally the same as the first input file specified. There are, however, two exceptions to this.

When the utility first reads all input files, processes them, and then generates output (for
example, diff), the output is normally in the format of the first specified input file unless the
input files are a mix of ASCII and Unicode/UTF-8 formats. In that case, the output format is the
format of the first non-ASCII input file specified.

When multiple input files are being read and multiple output files are being generated (as can
often be the case with awk and perl scripts), the format of a given output file (or standard
output) depends upon what input files have been read at the time of the output file's creation. If
only ASCII format input files have at that time, the output file is created using the format of the
first ASCII file read. If, however, only non-ASCII (Unicode or UTF-8) or mix of ASCII and non-
ASCII files have been read, the output file is created using the format of the first non-ASCII
input file read.

When deciding how files should be treated, the input and output code pages are also taken into
account. MKS Toolkit supports the system OEM and ANSI code pages and normally sets the
output code page to match the input code page.

For the TK_STDIO_DEFAULT_INPUT_FORMAT and TK_STDIO_DEFAULT_OUTPUT_FORMAT

environment variables, the true meaning of the value ASCII depends upon the appropriate input
or output code page. If the code page is the system ANSI code page, ASCII is equivalent to
ASCII_ANSI; otherwise, it is equivalent to ASCII_OEM.

For ASCII input, when TK_STDIO_DEFAULT_INPUT_FORMAT is not set and the input code page
is the system ANSI code page, the input is assumed to be in ASCII_ANSI format. Otherwise, it is
assumed to be in ASCII_OEM format.

For ASCII output, when TK_STDIO_DEFAULT_OUTPUT_FORMAT is not set, and the output code
page is the system ANSI code page, the output is written in ASCII_ANSI format. Otherwise it is
assumed to be in ASCII_OEM format.

Note: To change the input and output code page, use the stty utility's cp command (for
example, stty cp 437) . To display a list of available code pages on your system or display the
current code pages, use the sysinf utility's codepages command (for example, sysinf
codepages -c).

By default, Windows systems use the OEM code page for all console input and output. Most
MKS Toolkit non-graphical utilities use console input/output as does viw (for compatibility with
vi). As a result, files that have been saved in ANSI format (for example, by Notepad) may not be
correctly read or displayed by these utilities. To read and display these files correctly, you can do
one of the following:

• use the stty cp command to set the code page to the ANSI code page
• specify the utility's -U option (if available)
• assign the appropriate value to the TK_STDIO_DEFAULT_INPUT_FORMAT environment
variable
• use the -f option of the appropriate vi Ex command to force the file to be read as
ASCII_ANSI. For example, you might enter the following on the Ex command line of vi to
save the current file in ASCII_ANSI format with the name file1:

:w -f ASCII_ANSI file1

Finally, the font selected for a console window may also affect how characters are displayed. For
example, the Lucida Console font allows a greater number of characters to be displayed. When a
character cannot be displayed in the console window using the current font, the system default
character is displayed in its place.

File Character Formats

MKS Toolkit supports text files with characters stored in a variety of formats. MKS Toolkit
utilities support specifying the precise input and output format of files handled through the use of
environment variables (see ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES, the -U option found in several utilities
(such as diff, more, and wc, and various options and commands in vi. A variety of values can be
used to express file character formats. While all these values can be used with the environment
variables and vi, only the single character values can be with -U. All values are case insensitive.
The following values indicate ASCII files:

ASCII_ANSI ASCII characters from the ANSI code page

ASCII_OEM ASCII characters form the OEM code page
ASCII same as ASCII_OEM or ASCII_ANSI depending
on input code page
ANSI same as ASCII_ANSI
OEM same as ASCII_OEM
A same as ASCII_ANSI
O same as ASCII_OEM

The following values indicate Unicode/UTF-8 (non-ASCII) files:

UNICODE_BIG_ENDIAN Big endian 16-bit wide characters

UNICODE_LITTLE_ENDIAN Little endian 16-bit wide characters
UTF-8 UTF-8 characters
UNICODE same as UNICODE_LITTLE_ENDIAN
L same as UNICODE_LITTLE_ENDIAN
B same as UNICODE_BIG_ENDIAN
UTF8 same as UTF-8
8 same as UTF-8

Environment Variables

TK_ARCHIVE_CHARSET Contains the format to be used by cpio, tar, pax, vpax, zip, or
unzip when reading and writing file names to an archive. The value must be one of ASCII_ANSI,
ASCII_OEM, or UTF-8 (or their equivalents) as described in the File Character Formats section
above.

When this variable is unset or it is set to a value other than those listed earlier, the default OEM
character set is used.

TK_CMDSUB_FORMAT Contains the format to be used for the output from command
substitution in MKS KornShell (the `command_line` and $(command_line) structures) and MKS
C Shell (the `command_line` structure). The value must be one of those listed in the File
Character Formats section above.

When TK_CMDSUB_FORMAT is not set, the value of the TK_STDIO_DEFAULT_OUTPUT_FORMAT

environment variable is used to determine the format used for command substitution output.

When TK_CMDSUB_FORMAT and TK_STDIO_DEFAULT_OUTPUT_FORMAT are both unset, the

output of command substitution uses ASCII_OEM characters. This provides compatibility with
older versions of MKS Toolkit.

TK_HEREDOC_FORMAT Contains the format to be used for here documents in MKS KornShell
and MKS C Shell. The value must be one of those listed in the File Character Formats section
above.
When TK_HEREDOC_FORMAT and TK_STDIO_DEFAULT_OUTPUT_FORMAT are both unset, here
documents are assumed to use ASCII_OEM characters. This provides compatibility with older
versions of MKS Toolkit.

When TK_STDIO_DEFAULT_OUTPUT_FORMAT is set to a Unicode/UTF-8 format and you are

feeding a here document to to a non-MKS Toolkit utility that won't understand its format, you
should set TK_HEREDOC_FORMAT to ASCII_OEM and export it.

When TK_HEREDOC_FORMAT is unset or TK_STDIO_DEFAULT_OUTPUT_FORMAT is set to an

ASCII format and your here document contains non-ASCII (OEM) characters, you should set
TK_HEREDOC_FORMAT to UTF-8 and export it.

This variable takes precedence over TK_STDIO_DEFAULT_OUTPUT_FORMAT.

TK_STDIO_DEFAULT_INPUT_FORMAT Sets the default input format for files that don't have the
initial multibyte marker. The value must be one of those listed in the File Character Formats
section above.

TK_STDIO_DEFAULT_OUTPUT_FORMAT Sets the default output format. Normally the format of

the first file read is used as the default output format. The value must be one of those listed in the
File Character Formats section above.

Availability

MKS Toolkit for Power Users

MKS Toolkit for System Administrators
MKS Toolkit for Developers
MKS Toolkit for Interoperability
MKS Toolkit for Professional Developers
MKS Toolkit for Enterprise Developers

See Also

Commands: cat, diff, grep, head, more, od, registry, shexec, strings, tail, unzip, vi, wc

File Formats: magic