One reason is that tar supports both traditional style args “tar tf <filename.tar>” and unix-style args “tar -tf <filename.tar>” but there are subtle differences in how they work.
Literally the only time I’ve ever run into that is when I was trying to manipulate the path it extracted to. In 99% of cases I’m doing tf, xf, or cf plus flags for the compression type, etc, and those differences are irrelevant.
I used something recently where it wasn’t possible to use the traditional-style args. I think it was a “diff”, which meant I needed a “-f”. It wasn’t a big deal, but, occasionally it does happen.
I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. This thread started because I said I’ve never understood why people talk like tar is some indecipherable black magic. Common tasks are easy and there’s a man page for everything else.
