tcopy(1) (was Re: 1/4 inch cartridge tape drives & tar)

[Paul V. O'Neill]

> Fine, but what if you *forget* how many files are on the tape (ok, lose
> the paper it's written down on :-)), or worse yet, replace a tar with a.....

Oh, come on!! A tape that is unlabeled is worthless.

This brings up a pet peeve of mine about 4.0.  tcopy(1) is brain-dead.  It
would be so nice if it worked as described in the man page.

     When only a source drive is specified, tcopy scans the tape,
     and displays information about the sizes of records and tape
     files.  If a destination is specified, tcopy makes a  copies  (sic) ....

I've tried all kinds of redirects but it always spews the entire contents
of argument 1 (source tape) to the screen.  (4/110, /dev/nrst8, SunOS 4.0)

Has anyone been able to get tcopy to just list the summary??  Then if you
"*forget* how many files...." you could just tcopy(1) it.

Paul O'Neill                 pvo at oce.orst.edu
Coastal Imaging Lab
OSU--Oceanography
Corvallis, OR  97331         503-754-3251