MPE/iX Shell and Utilities Reference Manual, Vol 2

pax(1) MPE/iX Shell and Utilities pax(1)
NAME
pax — archiver for data interchange and file backup
SYNOPSIS
pax [–cdnqvz][–f archive][–s substitute] ... [pattern ...]
pax –r [–cdiknuvz][–f archive][–o options] ... [–p string] ...
[–s substitute] ... [–V volpat][pattern ...]
pax –w [–diLqtuvXz][–b block][[–a][–f archive]] [–o options] ...
[–s substitute] ... [–V volpat][–x format][pathname ...]
pax –r –w [–diklLnquvX][–p string] ... [–s substitute] ...
[pathname ...] directory
DESCRIPTION
Note: The
MPE/iX implementation of this utility does not function exactly as this man page
describes. For details, see the MPE/iX NOTES section at the end of this man page.
pax reads and writes archive files. An archive file records the contents of files and directories,
and can also record such information as file modification dates, owner names (on
POSIX-com-
pliant systems), and so on. You can therefore use a single archive file to transfer a directory
structure from one machine to another, or to backup/restore groups of files and directories.
A file stored inside an archive is called a component file; similarly, a directory stored inside an
archive is called a component directory. Together, component files and directories make up
the components of the archive file.
You can specify the name of the archive file with the –f archive option. If you do not specify
–f or neither of –r or –w, the –r option assumes the archive file is the standard input while
the –w options assumes it is the standard output.
As noted in the SYNOPSIS, there are four possible formats for the pax command line.
If you do not specify –r or –w, you are in list mode. In this mode, pax uses the standard
output to display the table of contents of an existing archive file. pax only displays
information on component files the names of which match one of the patterns given on
the command line. Patterns are described in a later section of this man page.
If you specify –r but not –w, you are in read mode. In this mode, pax reads an archive
file as input and extracts selected components from the archive. By default, pax selects
the components using patterns given on the command line. If the archive contains sev-
eral components with the same name, pax extracts each of them with later components
overwriting files created by earlier components with the same name.
1-416 Commands and Utilities