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Diffstat (limited to 'README.md')
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 16 |
1 files changed, 14 insertions, 2 deletions
@@ -133,8 +133,20 @@ When creating archives, the result can be filtered with any of the following: pass from beginning to end. For example, this allows libarchive to process archives too large to store on disk by processing them on-the-fly as they are read from or - written to a network or tape drive. Conversely, libarchive - does not support in-place modification or random access. + written to a network or tape drive. This also makes + libarchive useful for tools that need to produce + archives on-the-fly (such as webservers that provide + archived contents of a users account). + +* In-place modification and random access to the contents + of an archive are not directly supported. For some formats, + this is not an issue: For example, tar.gz archives are not + designed for random access. In some other cases, libarchive + can re-open an archive and scan it from the beginning quickly + enough to provide the needed abilities even without true + random access. Of course, some applications do require true + random access; those applications should consider alternatives + to libarchive. * The library is designed to be extended with new compression and archive formats. The only requirement is that the format be |