The man page says:
> The names read are handled the same way as command line arguments.
> They undergo quote removal and word splitting, and any string that
> starts with a - is handled as tar command line option.
I understand that to mean that quote removal and word splitting always
happen by default, and maybe even words starting with - are handled as
command line options, it's not entirely clear that "any string that
starts with -" means any line (stripped of whitespace) that starts with -
The more complete manual says:
> By default, each line read from the file list is first stripped off
any leading and trailing whitespace. If the resulting string begins with
‘-’ character, it is considered a tar option and is processed accordingly
This says that special processing (ie of quotes and word splitting) only
happens on lines that start with - (or whitespace followed by -).
And that seems to match GNU tar's behavior, ie I can do:
printf '"a b.txt"\n' > list
touch '"a b.txt"'
tar -cvf test.tar -T list
no quote removal or word splitting is happening there, contradicting the
man page, but in agreement with the complete manual.
