[derefr]

> `tar` is called `tap` and cannot put its archives in files other than actual physical magtapes

Insofar as "everything is a file" applied at this point, could you just mv /tap0 out of the way and put a file there? If not, which of the few syscalls that had been invented so far was tap(1) using against /tap0, that couldn't be used against files?

[kragen]

it's hard to be sure from looking at a manual to a version of unix whose source code has been lost, but it seems that this might work

conceivably though /tap0 had different seek() semantics than regular files or something (it was a dectape)