The tarfile module makes it possible to read and create tar archives. Some facts and figures:
| [name[, mode [, fileobj[, bufsize]]]]) |
mode has to be a string of the form 'filemode[:compression]',
it defaults to 'r'. Here is a full list of mode combinations:
| mode | action |
|---|---|
'r' |
Open for reading with transparent compression (recommended). |
'r:' |
Open for reading exclusively without compression. |
'r:gz' |
Open for reading with gzip compression. |
'r:bz2' |
Open for reading with bzip2 compression. |
'a' or 'a:' |
Open for appending with no compression. |
'w' or 'w:' |
Open for uncompressed writing. |
'w:gz' |
Open for gzip compressed writing. |
'w:bz2' |
Open for bzip2 compressed writing. |
Note that 'a:gz' or 'a:bz2' is not possible.
If mode is not suitable to open a certain (compressed) file for
reading, ReadError is raised. Use mode 'r' to
avoid this. If a compression method is not supported,
CompressionError is raised.
If fileobj is specified, it is used as an alternative to a file object opened for name.
For special purposes, there is a second format for mode:
'filemode|[compression]'. open will return a TarFile
object that processes its data as a stream of blocks. No random
seeking will be done on the file. If given, fileobj may be any
object that has a read() resp. write() method.
bufsize specifies the blocksize and defaults to 20 * 512
bytes. Use this variant in combination with e.g. sys.stdin, a socket
file object or a tape device.
However, such a TarFile object is limited in that it does not allow
to be accessed randomly, see Examples (section
7.19.3).
The currently possible modes:
| mode | action |
|---|---|
'r|' |
Open a stream of uncompressed tar blocks for reading. |
'r|gz' |
Open a gzip compressed stream for reading. |
'r|bz2' |
Open a bzip2 compressed stream for reading. |
'w|' |
Open an uncompressed stream for writing. |
'w|gz' |
Open an gzip compressed stream for writing. |
'w|bz2' |
Open an bzip2 compressed stream for writing. |
| name) |
True if name is a tar archive file, that the
tarfile module can read.
| filename[, mode[, compression]]) |
Class for limited access to tar archives with a zipfile-like
interface. Please consult the documentation of zipfile for more
details.
compression must be one of the following constants:
gzip compressed tar archive.
== 2.
See Also:
zipfile
standard module.