Today I was reading @b0rkJulia Evans 's comic about tar: https://wizardzines.com/comics/tar/?utmsource=satcomics

When I learned how to use `tar` on Linux (probably ~20 years ago?) I learned that you don't need to memorize all the compression flags (`-z`, `-j`, `-J`, `-Z`) because tar auto-detects the compression format when extracting/listing.

This is handy because then I only have to learn the flag for my _favorite_ compression format when creating tarballs, and let the auto-detection figure it out for tarballs I receive.

I'm surprised the example in this comic uses the compression format when listing (`-tjvf`). Does that mean there's a version of `tar` in common usage that doesn't support auto-detection? Or is the auto-detection unreliable in some common circumstance? Or some third possibility I haven't thought of?