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