On Sun, 27 Jun 2010 13:08:58 +0200
Enrico Weigelt <weigelt@metux.de> wrote:
> > > Well, at least for tar, I've experienced no problem here yet.
> > > But: true, it might change between tar versions.
> > 
> > The main offender is the compression program, not tar.
> 
> hmm, I'm exclusively using bzip2 and never had these problems
> yet. maybe it depends on the compressor type.

Your problem is that you are thinking in terms of "well I've not seen
it break", not "I can prove that it will always work".

You may find the "Compressed output may vary" section of "man 1 xz" to
be useful.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh