star is the fastest known implementation of a tar archiver. star development started 1982, development is still in progress. The current version is stable. Main advantages over other tar implementations: fifo - Keeps the tape streaming. pattern matcher - For a convenient user interface. sophisticated diff - User tailorable interface for comparing tar archives against file trees. no namelen limitation - Pathnames up to 1024 Bytes may be archived. deals with all 3 times - Stores/restores all 3 times of a file. does not clobber files - More recent copies on disk will not be clobbered from tape. automatic byte swap - star automatically detects swapped archives. automatic format detect - Automatically detects archive formats: old tar, gnu tar, ansi tar, star. fully ansi compatible - star is fully ANSI/Posix 1003.1 compatible. WWW: http://www.fokus.gmd.de/research/cc/glone/employees/joerg.schilling/private/star.html Author: Joerg Schilling Please mail bugs and suggestions to him.