alt Hacker NewsDo you really need a central directory? The tar and cpio file formats basically append files serially with a small header preceeding each one, and for most use cases this is sufficient.
Do you really need a central directory? The tar and cpio file formats basically append files serially with a small header preceeding each one, and for most use cases this is sufficient.
You don't need one, but it's convenient for listing the files in the archive without having to scan through it.