The following reply was made to PR bin/35257; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: matthew green <mrg@eterna.com.au>
To: gnats-bugs@NetBSD.org
Cc: gnats-admin@netbsd.org, netbsd-bugs@netbsd.org
Subject: re: bin/35257: tar(1) opens excluded files 
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2006 06:54:52 +1100

 ah.
 
 i'd guess this is due to the --exclude functionality being implemented
 on top of pax's -s flag.  i wonder if there is an easy way to check that
 the output file name isn't "" before trying to open the file...
 
 
 
 .mrg.