tar -cvzf foo-1.25.tar.gz --posix foo-1.25 I don't know about using --posix in particular(*), but I concur with Dr. Kirkby that it would be useful to show one example of mixing short and long options. What comes up most often in my work is
tar -czf foo.tar.gz --exclude=somebigfile . karl (*) my experience with TeX Live has shown that --posix is definitely not portable in practice on current systems (various Solaris and/or BSD and/or Windows tars fail). Therefore I don't think something as visible as a --help example should use --posix. --ustar, on the other hand, seems to work.
