In message <28461.941474918@eterna.com.au>, matthew green writes:
   >i have commited a change to options.h (rev1.5) that should fix this bug

this is now rev 1.6; mycroft pointed out i had my logic reversed.

   >(which would allow -A with -rw; reading the code shows that it *always*
   >does the equivalent of -A anyway).
   
   I'm not sure I follow.  I thought this would be a mildly controversial change,
   because it changes the *DEFAULT* behavior.  '-A' is *honor* absolute paths,
   or at least, was in my code.  With my change, if you *don't* specify '-A',
   you don't get absolute paths.

that's how it is right now.
   
   I can't figure out how '-rw' could 'honor absolute paths' meaningfully; the
   entire point of it is to write into a named destination directory, rather than
   root.

exactly.  the bug was that "pax -rwA" was allowed.
   
   I'm a little confused.  I'm also not clear on why Aflag is getting set in -P
   mode; I don't see the connection.

tar -P?  from the gnu tar man page:

     -P
     --absolute-paths        Don't strip leading `/'s from file names.