6.3.1 NUL Terminated File Names

The --null option causes --files-from=file-of-names (-T file-of-names) to read file names terminated by a NUL instead of a newline, so files whose names contain newlines can be archived using --files-from.

--null

Only consider NUL terminated file names, instead of files that terminate in a newline.

The --null option is just like the one in GNU xargs and cpio, and is useful with the -print0 predicate of GNU find. In tar, --null also disables special handling for file names that begin with dash.

This example shows how to use find to generate a list of files larger than 800K in length and put that list into a file called long-files. The -print0 option to find is just like -print, except that it separates files with a NUL rather than with a newline. You can then run tar with both the --null and -T options to specify that tar get the files from that file, long-files, to create the archive big.tgz. The --null option to tar will cause tar to recognize the NUL separator between files.

     $ find .  -size +800 -print0 > long-files
     $ tar -c -v --null --files-from=long-files --file=big.tar