Dear GNU tar maintainers, In the manual, at http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/tar.html#SEC11 , I read the following: "In the examples and in the text of this tutorial, we usually use the long forms of operations and options; but the “short” forms produce the same result and can make typing long tar commands easier."
This is a reasonable approach. I also think it is right that in that same section the following is, additionally, present: "In this book we present a full discussion of this way of writing options and operations (see section Old Option Style), and we discuss the other two styles of writing options (See section Long Option Style, and see section Short Option Style)." As a reader of the manual, my impression from that section is that: - In the section headed "Old Option Style", I will find an explanation of why the Old form exists, and when and how to use it; - In all other sections of the manual, I will encounter only the Long form and the Short form. I wish the manual would conform to these expectations, but unfortunately it doesn't. (For example, see http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/tar.html#SEC132 , which uses the Old form.) Until it does, I expect I will find that the traffic to my blog post http://www.sampablokuper.com/2009/01/03/tar-cannot-stat/ remains considerable, which obviously represents a less than ideal state of affairs from a usability standpoint re: tar. It is clear from the comments on my blog post that the manual as it stands is not adequately clear (unless, perhaps, if it is read all the way through): if a reader skips straight to SEC132, for instance, s/he will miss the explanation that the Short and Old forms are different, and will be puzzled if s/he attempts to apply the options shown there, but with what s/he believes to be an entirely reasonable, conventional and functionally insignificant addition of a hyphen prepended to them. Best regards, Sam Kuper
