In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 14 Nov 1997 05:45:48 PST."
             <199711141345.FAA03288@Kowhai.Stanford.EDU> 
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 1997 11:20:39 -0500
From: "John F. Woods" <jfw@jfwhome.funhouse.com>

>> You invoked standards. What do the standards have to say about the
>> behavour of `tar --unlink'?  Hmmm?

>"Hide under the desk and whimper."

Well, at least you're honest about  it :).



>> Personally, I think it would be nice to fix tar so --unlink allowed
>> the old-style flags. Can we do that?

>"Can", certainly.  It's only software.  But "should"?  I think I can only
>see confusion from any attempt to combine -- flags and traditional tar
>bundled flags;

John, look, this whole damn thread is about the confusion caused by
*NOT* allowing traditional tar flags with --unlink.  We KNOW that
confusion already exists.  Killing one Confusion in the hand is worth
two hiding under the desk, or something.

Besides, Simon Burge points out that --unlink is now the default for
our tar....