Unix without tar?

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <JES.89Aug30102233 at mbio.med.upenn.edu> jes at mbio.med.upenn.edu (Joe Smith) writes:
>Recently, someone asserted that tar archives aren't a suitable
>distribution format because they aren't understood by every Unix.

"tar" archives may not be suitable, but it's not because "tar" is
unavailable.  Every AT&T UNIX release since 7th Edition (around 1978)
has included some version of "tar"; it's "cpio" that may not exist
everywhere (particularly 4.2BSD-based systems).