Re: [PATCH] archive: Store checksum correctly

René Scharfe [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

Wow.  The choice of %07o is as old as the very original of tar-tree
implementation in our codebase, starting at ae64bbc1 ("tar-tree:
Introduce write_entry()", 2006-03-25).

Actually it's already in 731ab9ccf2 ("[PATCH] create tar archives of
tree on the fly", 2005-04-28).

Yup, after viewing "git show ae64bbc1" I found out the commit added
a new helper to do %07o without touching the existing one that did
the same.  Problem with relying on "git blame" too much X-<.

quoted

I think the updated behaviour matches Wikipedia [*1*] where it
spells out that 6 octal is followed by a NUL and a SP; it also says
various implementations do not adhere to this format---perhaps they
meant us ;-)

OpenBSD's pax(1) does the same if I read
https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/master/bin/pax/tar.c correctly.

What's more interesting is that their verifier in tar_id() compares
the ulong value read from textual checksum with the ulong value
computed.  I agree with you that it would be the more robust way
than what is done by squshfs tools (ng).