Problem sending .tar files, turns into a .zip?Why?
 

Hi I have a colleague in China,
I am sending a .tar file from my Linux OS through outlook express email.

Here's my problem:

The file I initially send is like this:
File Name.tar

When she receives it, the file turns into this
File Name_tar.zip

why does this "_tar.zip" come about, and how can I send her the file as a .tar???

Pls Help!

Thanks
Ank_With_Problems

I don't understand Are you using windows or linux? And are you sending a tar file or a tar.gz or tar.bz2 file?
jdk

I think there's an option in some mail programs, something like "Download all attachments as a zip archive." Probably, you colleague uses it to get your tarballs. It's the outlook feature or a problem, depending on how you look at it...

Do they turn out to be valid zip archives though?

Sounds like you are making the tars on Linux, then emailing from Windows?

This is generally a bad idea, especially if the receiver is a Windows user too - Windows needs third party software to handle tars (and tar.gz specifically) and most Windows users won't have an idea what to make such files.

It might be a variation of what another poster suggested, maybe the receiving mailclient tries to be clever and seeing the "strange" extension, renames it automatically?

The kicker is if the file, when called *_tar.zip, IS, in fact, a valid .zip file? I'm willing to bet it may be called "*_tar.zip" but that it still is a tar file...