All three styles may be intermixed in a single tar command, so
long as the rules for each style are fully respected(3). Old style options and either of the
modern styles of options may be mixed within a single tar command.
However, old style options must be introduced as the first arguments only,
following the rule for old options (old options must appear directly
after the tar command and some whitespace). Modern options may
be given only after all arguments to the old options have been collected.
If this rule is not respected, a modern option might be falsely interpreted
as the value of the argument to one of the old style options.
For example, all the following commands are wholly equivalent, and illustrate the many combinations and orderings of option styles.
tar --create --file=archive.tar tar --create -f archive.tar tar --create -farchive.tar tar --file=archive.tar --create tar --file=archive.tar -c tar -c --file=archive.tar tar -c -f archive.tar tar -c -farchive.tar tar -cf archive.tar tar -cfarchive.tar tar -f archive.tar --create tar -f archive.tar -c tar -farchive.tar --create tar -farchive.tar -c tar c --file=archive.tar tar c -f archive.tar tar c -farchive.tar tar cf archive.tar tar f archive.tar --create tar f archive.tar -c tar fc archive.tar
On the other hand, the following commands are not equivalent to the previous set:
tar -f -c archive.tar tar -fc archive.tar tar -fcarchive.tar tar -farchive.tarc tar cfarchive.tar
These last examples mean something completely different from what the
user intended (judging based on the example in the previous set which
uses long options, whose intent is therefore very clear). The first
four specify that the tar archive would be a file named
`-c', `c', `carchive.tar' or `archive.tarc',
respectively. The first two examples also specify a single non-option,
name argument having the value `archive.tar'. The last
example contains only old style option letters (repeating option
`c' twice), not all of which are meaningful (eg., `.',
`h', or `i'), with no argument value. @FIXME{not sure i liked
the first sentence of this paragraph..}
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