>> (2) You think temporary directories can always be used?  Are you
>> volunteering to supply the necessary disk space to everyone who
>> needs it?
> Pax (and, IIRC, tar) can easily extract only the one file that would
> just the same be sent to stdout --

Right, but you have to have enough disk space to hold it, which is my
point.

If I have a 500M archive holding a 100M archive holding a tiny file I
want, I need 100M of temporary space to get the tiny file without
extract-to-stdout.  With extract-to-stdout, I don't.

> you only need a temporary directory if you need to avoid accidentally
> clobbering any other file by the same name.

...huh?  You appear to be assuming that the idea of extracting a file,
even to stdout, is to put the file's contents on disk.
Extract-to-stdout is not just about file names; it's also about not
having to store the whole file at once.

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