[Lzip-bug] Tarlz 0.4: Scan or Simulate feature regarding 'ustar' format

[Timothy Beryl Grahek]

Hi,

So, considering the advantages and limitations of the 'ustar' format,
I was thinking that it would be super helpful to me if Tarlz had a
'scan' or 'simulate' operation that basically would do the following:

tarlz --scan foo1 foo2 foo3
tarlz --simulate foo1 foo2 foo3

When --scan or --simulate is called, it scans whatever folders or
files are appended after --scan or --simulate and sees if those
elements meet the requirements of the 'ustar' format.

This would be so useful to me because I am sure I have many folders or
files on my machine that do not meet the 'ustar' format, and I would
like to be able to archive and compress those folders and files at
some point without having to waste time finding out after compressing
lots of data that some of the files or folders can't be archived.

Is anyone aware of a utility that does this already? I can't think of
one, and GNU Tar doesn't have a feature like this. It makes a great
deal of sense for Tarlz to possibly have a feature like this, though,
since it by default uses 'ustar' for a very good reason.

Thank you,

Timothy Beryl Grahek