Tar/delete

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4.2.5 Removing Archive Members Using `--delete'

You can remove members from an archive by using the `--delete' option. Specify the name of the archive with `--file' (`-f') and then specify the names of the members to be deleted; if you list no member names, nothing will be deleted. The `--verbose' option will cause tar to print the names of the members as they are deleted. As with `--extract', you must give the exact member names when using `tar --delete'. `--delete' will remove all versions of the named file from the archive. The `--delete' operation can run very slowly.

Unlike other operations, `--delete' has no short form.

This operation will rewrite the archive. You can only use `--delete' on an archive if the archive device allows you to write to any point on the media, such as a disk; because of this, it does not work on magnetic tapes. Do not try to delete an archive member from a magnetic tape; the action will not succeed, and you will be likely to scramble the archive and damage your tape. There is no safe way (except by completely re-writing the archive) to delete files from most kinds of magnetic tape. See section Tapes and Other Archive Media.

To delete all versions of the file `blues' from the archive `collection.tar' in the `practice' directory, make sure you are in that directory, and then,

 
$ tar --list --file=collection.tar
blues
folk
jazz
rock
$ tar --delete --file=collection.tar blues
$ tar --list --file=collection.tar
folk
jazz
rock

See Check if the above listing is actually produced after running all the examples on collection.tar.

The `--delete' option has been reported to work properly when tar acts as a filter from stdin to stdout.

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