Pipes

[apaton]

You got to love the Unix shell, I've been Unix everyday for twenty plus years and I still find new commands/utils that make my day easier.

Check out Pipe Viewer "pv" and watch the data transferring between pipes, in terms of data rate.

Replace your

$ ( cd /source ; tar cf - .) | (cd /target ; tar xf - )

with

$ (cd iso ; tar cf - . ) | pv | (cd ~/Desktop/test ; tar xf - )
24MB 0:00:01 [ 35MB/s] [<=>                        ]

The following IBM article explains it better than I could.
Speaking UNIX: Peering into pipes

This is now installed on all my Linux/Solaris boxes.
Ubuntu - sudo apt-get install pv
Solaris - Freeware List for SPARC and Solaris 10

Andy

[ind1ekid]

Have to say, when I learned about pipes at uni it certainly makes scripting alot easier