Problem with option -N

[Ed Crenshaw]

Hi All,

Using Linux 2.4.18 with a gnu tar which identifies itself thus:

tar (GNU tar) 1.13.25
Copyright (C) 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This program comes with NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
You may redistribute it under the terms of the GNU General Public License;
see the file named COPYING for details.
Written by John Gilmore and Jay Fenlason.

I issued the following command to create an archive which would only
contain files newer than November 10, 2002:

tar zc -N2002-11-10 -p -P -f tarball.tar.gz /root/*

In the following partial listing of the contents of the resulting
archive there is a subdirectory "a1" which is newer than the
specified date but its contained files are not newer.  They did
however get placed in the archive.  Also I'd like to point out that
I couldn't find the correct format of "DATE" defined anywhere and I
had to experiment to get this far.

drwx------ video/users       0 2002-11-06 15:22:14 /root/Desktop/
-rw-r--r-- video/users     173 2002-11-20 09:12:29 /root/Desktop/.directory
drwx------ video/users       0 2002-09-17 10:13:05 /root/Desktop/Trash/
drwx------ root/root         0 2002-11-06 15:01:15 /root/Mail/
drwx------ root/root         0 2002-11-06 15:01:15 /root/Mail/inbox/
drwx------ root/root         0 2002-11-06 15:01:08 /root/Mail/inbox/new/
drwx------ root/root         0 2002-11-06 15:01:08 /root/Mail/inbox/cur/
drwx------ root/root         0 2002-11-06 15:01:08 /root/Mail/inbox/tmp/
drwx------ root/root         0 2002-11-06 15:01:15 /root/Mail/outbox/
drwx------ root/root         0 2002-11-06 15:01:09 /root/Mail/outbox/new/
drwx------ root/root         0 2002-11-06 15:01:09 /root/Mail/outbox/cur/
drwx------ root/root         0 2002-11-06 15:01:09 /root/Mail/outbox/tmp/
drwx------ root/root         0 2002-11-06 15:01:15 /root/Mail/sent-mail/
drwx------ root/root         0 2002-11-06 15:01:09 /root/Mail/sent-mail/new/
drwx------ root/root         0 2002-11-06 15:01:09 /root/Mail/sent-mail/cur/
drwx------ root/root         0 2002-11-06 15:01:09 /root/Mail/sent-mail/tmp/
drwx------ root/root         0 2002-11-06 15:01:15 /root/Mail/trash/
drwx------ root/root         0 2002-11-06 15:01:09 /root/Mail/trash/new/
drwx------ root/root         0 2002-11-06 15:01:09 /root/Mail/trash/cur/
drwx------ root/root         0 2002-11-06 15:01:09 /root/Mail/trash/tmp/
drwx------ root/root         0 2002-11-06 15:01:15 /root/Mail/drafts/
drwx------ root/root         0 2002-11-06 15:01:09 /root/Mail/drafts/new/
drwx------ root/root         0 2002-11-06 15:01:09 /root/Mail/drafts/cur/
drwx------ root/root         0 2002-11-06 15:01:09 /root/Mail/drafts/tmp/
drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2002-11-20 08:28:03 /root/a1/
-r-xr-xr-x root/root     18969 1999-07-30 13:17:55 /root/a1/fcopy
-r--r--r-- root/root      3667 1999-07-30 13:17:55 /root/a1/fcopy.c
-r-xr-xr-x root/root     18860 1999-07-30 13:17:55 /root/a1/fdates
-r--r--r-- root/root      3339 1999-07-30 13:17:55 /root/a1/fdates.c
-r-xr-xr-x root/root     17979 1999-07-30 13:17:55 /root/a1/ftest
-r--r--r-- root/root      3018 1999-07-30 13:17:55 /root/a1/ftest.c
-r-xr-xr-x root/root       321 1999-07-30 13:17:55 /root/a1/list
-r-xr-xr-x root/root       172 1999-07-30 13:17:55 /root/a1/makecd
-r-xr-xr-x root/root        70 1999-07-30 13:17:55 /root/a1/message
-r-xr-xr-x root/root       147 1999-07-30 13:17:56 /root/a1/resetlogs
-rw-r--r-- root/root      2319 2002-11-15 10:27:53 /root/align.ps
-rwxr--r-- root/root        42 2002-11-19 14:44:52 /root/auto

Ed Crenshaw
Data Display Systems
14001 Townsend Road
Philadelphia, PA 19154
215-698-2600 Voice
215-677-2009 Fax