tar .vs. cpio -- flame!

[Karl Auerbach]

When discussing software it is unfair to make a statement such as:
   "it would be easy to add X"  or  "it would be easy to modify X to do Y".

We need to deal with concrete, existing entities.  Otherwise the discussion
becomes too metaphysical.

The point is that cpio and tar do some things that are similar and some
which are not.  Rather than saying that one is better than the other because
it can be modified to include the good points of the other, we could 
identify the strengths and weaknesses of each program and perhaps
make a choice of which program to upgrade.

Karl Auerbach
{allegra,fortune,decwrl,ihnp4,ucbvax}!twg!karl