[jmercouris]

Isn't it true that you must provide the hyphen before `xvzf`?

[jchw]

Actually no. All tar implementations I know of support "old" style options.

https://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_section/Styles....

I don't know the exact history of how this options style came to be, but I assume it's probably some really ancient UNIX thing.