tar .vs. cpio

[tut at ucbopal.CC.Berkeley.ARPA]

Could someone justify the existence of cpio?  What's wrong with tar?
As the saying goes, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."  The only
portability problems I've ever encountered with tar were, I believe,
caused by 1) a strange Plexus tape drive, and 2) the unavailability
of tar on bare System V.  Tar descends directory hierarchies, while
cpio requires the aid of find.  Tar always uses character at a time
I/O, while cpio must be passed the -c flag to do this.  So what have
I overlooked?

Bill Tuthill
ucbvax!opal.tut