tar bug?

[Patrick Alken]

Hello,
  I believe I have found a problem with gnu tar 1.13. The -L (or 
--tape-length) option seems to be broken. No matter what number I supply 
to it, it replies with the message "Invalid tape length". I fixed this by 
changing lines 657-658 of tar.c:

    if (xstrtoul (optarg, (char **) 0, 10, &u, "") != LONG_MAX)
      USAGE_ERROR ((0, 0, _("Invalid tape length")));

to:

    xstrtoul (optarg, (char **) 0, 10, &u, "");

It seems that the original code only wants your tape lengths to be 
LONG_MAX in size. I have no idea why anyone would want that. On the other 
hand, the timestamp of tar-1.13.tar.gz on the gnu ftp site is 1999, and I 
find it hard to believe that no one has reported this in 3 years, so maybe 
I am missing something.

Sincerely,
Patrick Alken