Hi Matthew, The '--verbatim-files-from' option is supposed to handle its input verbatim, hence its name. Eight years is sifficiently long time, but if my memory serves me, the commit you referred to was an answer to some bug reports which complained that 'tar -T' started to handle its input differently at some point.
That being said, I agree that an option like '--print0' is certainly a good idea. Best regards, Sergey
