On 2020-08-19, at 11:44:45, Guy Harris wrote:
And does Z/OS UNIX use EBCDIC rather than ASCII? If so, it may be a UNIX, but it's a UNIX for which a lot of code written for UN*Xes may not work, although the tz code might have avoided making ASCII-specific assumptions.
Absolutely true, only slightly mitigated in that z/OS pax embeds code conversion, as does Info-ZIP "unzip -aa". It leaves the problem "a lot of code written for UN*Xes may not work, ..."
And Single UNIX much prefers "pax" over "tar" nowadays.
"prefers" in what sense? And, in practice, how many pax archives using its extensions to ustar format are out there?
https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/toc.html ... mentions "pax", not "tar".
...offering both a tarball and a zipball might be a good idea (zip exists as a UN*X command, and ships with at least UN*Xes, but UN*X users may be less used to it).
Again, non-POSIX, but distributed with (most) Linux.
And at least some non-Linux UN*Xes:
Yes. -- gil