Open System Services Shell and Utilities Reference Manual (G06.28+, H06.05+)

pax(1) OSS Shell and Utilities Reference Manual
In write mode, the standard input file is used only if no file operand is specified. The standard
input file must be a text file containing a list of pathnames, one per line, without leading or trail-
ing blank characters. In list and read modes, the standard input file must be an archive file. In all
other cases, the standard input file is not used.
Standard Output
In write mode, the archive is written to the standard output file if -f is not supplied.
In list mode, the table of contents of the selected archive members is written to the standard out-
put file as:
%s\n,pathname
If the -v flag is also specified in either write or list mode, the output has the following format:
%s\n,ls -l listing
where ls -l listing is the format used by the ls utility when the -l flag is used in that command.
Standard Error
When -v is specified in the read, write, or copy modes, pax writes the pathnames it processes to
the standard error file using the following format:
%s\n, pathname
The pathname is written as soon as processing starts on the file or archive member and is sent to
the standard error file.
When -s is specified in the read, write, or copy modes, and the replacement string has a trailing p,
substitutions are written to the standard error file in the following format:
%s>>%s\n,original-pathname,new-pathname
Diagnostic messages are written to the standard error file.
Use on Guardian Objects
Unless otherwise noted, pax makes no distinction between Guardian and OSS files and treats
them the same way.
Guardian files can be specified with the /G pathname convention. On output, the Guardian files
are copied in the same manner they would be with the cp utility: the Guardian file attributes are
not preserved. On input, files can be restored to the Guardian target, but the existing Guardian
files are only overwritten if the -W clobber flag is specified. The file is restored as an unstruc-
tured Guardian file having the file code 180. Only Guardian files that are supported by the OSS
function calls ( open(), read(), write() ) are processed.
If the underlying function calls fail to operate on /G files, pax sends the error back to the caller
together with a diagnostic message and, if possible, continues to process the other files.
Guardian Tape Devices
pax uses Guardian tape devices to read and write tape archives. Guardian tape devices are con-
trolled by the Guardian tape process executing in the Guardian environment and do not behave
the same as UNIX devices. The interaction between the tape process and tape device is tran-
sparent to the pax user.
If the -W wait flag is set, pax first issues a mount request to the Guardian tape process and then
prints the following tape mount message to the terminal (/dev/tty):
Device not ready or tape is not mounted?
If /dev/tty is not available, pax does all of the following:
• Writes a diagnostic message to the standard output file
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