Unix without tar?

[Guy Harris]

>Recently, someone asserted that tar archives aren't a suitable
>distribution format because they aren't understood by every Unix.
>
>Given some reasonable constraints of their contents (ascii files,
>names < 14 chars), is this true?  Doesn't every Unix have tar?

Every version of UNIX AT&T has shipped as a source code porting base
has, to the best of my knowledge, had "tar".  I remember one case where
it was claimed that a vendor offering a binary version built from one of
those AT&T source versions had removed "tar", but hopefully that vendor
was tarred and feathered for that, and served as an example to others.