Files may be specified using either relative pathnames or absolute pathnames. The default used by BRU is to save each file by specifying the path to the file as relative to the current directory. This takes the form:
./subdir/filename
Naming a file using its relative pathname allows you to transport it from one filesystem to another because the path is relative to the current directory. For example, files that came from ./usr/tests on one machine may be restored to ./system/qa on another machine without the need to tell BRU anything about either the source or the target directory (since everything is relative to the current directory).
See Chapter 8, “Extracting Files: The BRU Restore Function,” “Where To Put the Files: Pathnames,” for a note on specifying file names. If files are specified, the names as stored will no longer be specified as relative to the current directory unless you explicitly include “./” in your file specifier(s). If you want your files to be portable from one machine (or filesystem) to another, you may want to specify files using a relative pathname rather than an absolute pathname. If you have backed up your files using absolute pathnames, BRU has an option (-PA) that allows you to convert an absolute pathname to a relative pathname when restoring the files. See the section on “Converting Pathnames from Absolute to Relative Form: -PA, “ in Chapter 8, “Extracting Files: The BRU Restore Function. NOTE: The string that describes the path to a file must not exceed the MAXPATH value for the shell within which BRU is being executed. For normal Bourne Shell, /bin/sh, this is usually 1023 characters.