Blogger builds a tarball that 8 tools extract 8 different ways
The gist
A blog post describes a tarball built with one GNU tar command that 8 tools each extract differently.
The same archive can yield different files depending on the parser.
How it unfolded
- Nov 7, 2026A post titled "The hardest tarball?" describes an archive built with a single GNU tar invocation that is extracted in 8 distinct ways depending on the tool used.
- Nov 10, 2026Armin Ronacher posts on X tagging @charliermarsh with a link to the post, calling it "this one is for y'all."
- Nov 10, 2026The post is submitted to Lobsters.
Key terms
- tarball
- A file produced by the tar archiver, combining multiple files into a single archive.
- POSIX-compliant
- Conforming to the IEEE family of standards that define APIs and shells for operating-system compatibility.
Source: Wikipedia