Um, exCUSE me.

NetBSD's tar may be / have been GNU tar, but according to the 4.2 BSD
UNIX User's Manual Reference Guide (URM):

"The following characters may be used in addition to the letter which 
 selects the function desired.

"o      On output, tar normally places information specifying owner and
        modes of directories in the archive.  Former versions of tar,
        when encountering this information will give error message
        of the form
                <name>/: cannot create
        This modifier will suppress the directory information."

In other words, it looks as though this is a holdover from Berkeley UNIX'
attempt to deal with old (V7/V6) archives.  So if you're going to use
a Binford 9000 Turbo Roaster on anyone, flame the CSRG for this.  They
had their reasons, and they were quite good, so I don't really advise
this either :-).



				--*greywolf;
--
Rule #1:
    If you can't interrupt it, terminate it.
    If you can't terminate it, kill it.
    If you can't kill it, reboot.	--greywolf@starwolf.com