On Fri, 5 Feb 1999, Bill Sommerfeld wrote:

: If one were to pay close attention to the different -o options cited,
: one would notice that one only affects archive creation, while the
: other only affects archive extraction.
: 
: Thus, these two features are not, strictly speaking, in conflict, and
: can thus share the same option letter in the interests of maximal
: backwards and standards compatibility.

That's actually a VERY intelligent point.

I'm going to make -o do the following:

- write V7 format archives (which, though part of GNU tar, actually
  goes along with the following point--after all, old pax-as-tar created
  V7 archives by default);
- write archives with "write_opt=nodir", as pax already did, and as
  specified by 4.2BSD;
- extract archives with owner/group set to invoking user, as specified
  by SUS.

This should make everyone happy.

-- 
-- Todd Vierling (Personal tv@pobox.com; Bus. todd_vierling@xn.xerox.com)