This is basically the parable of "Grandma's Ham"

https://www.executiveforum.com/cutting-off-the-ends-of-the-h...

tl;dr nobody in 2 generations knows why they cut the ends off the ham before cooking it, until they talked to grandma, who said her pan was too small

A Unix thing that's been posted to HN for a decade, that's almost literally the same story:

Understanding the bin, sbin, usr/bin , usr/sbin split

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3519952

tl;dr /usr/bin is separate from /bin because someone had a small hard disk once

So Grandma's Ham is a variant of Chesterton's Fence... When you do or don't do something for reasons of tradition, find the real reasons for doing / not doing it.

You’d be amazed how many people I’ve found that do ‘tar xzf filename’ without knowing what xzf is doing.

I'll admit to being one of those people. My brain still spells it out as eXtract Ze Files every time :-P

You're 2/3 correct:

x - extract

z - gzip format

f - file (must be last so it parses the filename arg correctly

I also add "vv" in the middle so it lists every file as it goes, so I can see it work instead of just waiting with no output.

It's not often I actually unzip stuff on the command line these days, but saying "extract ze files" in a terrible French accent in my head when I do is a highlight.

Passing "z" is pretty pointless for extractions.

I think it was required until about 2010 or so for GNU tar. (I still use it from habit.)

There was a problem about integrating support for different compression applications, with each one needing to get a new letter in the tar command!

Yup, I remember when you had to pass `z` if it was gzip, and I remember my surprise when I missed it once and it still worked (apparently about 5 years after it was no longer needed!)

Won't this fail when the file is not gzipped but, for example, zstd compressed?

It doesn't assume gzip, it detects the compression format.

I don't tend to amaze myself.