[_ZeD_]

With GNU tar, the -a flag is not needed

[Carpetsmoker]

You don't need it with libarchive-based BSD tar either. It can also extract zipfiles, ISO archives, and many other formats with just "tar xf file.zip".

[qalmakka]

libarchive is really awesome! I've started using bsdtar everywhere, it's so well done and polished I never felt the need to bother with anything else (same goes for bsdcpio)

[bscphil]

Note that it doesn't work with compression.

  tar cf example.tar.zst example

creates an uncompressed tar archive.

  tar caf example.tar.zst example

creates a zstd compressed archive.