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GNU `tar' documentation
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   Being careful, the first thing is really checking that you are using
GNU `tar', indeed.  The `--version' option will generate a message
giving confirmation that you are using GNU `tar', with the precise
version of GNU `tar' you are using.  `tar' identifies itself and prints
the version number to the standard output, then immediately exits
successfully, without doing anything else, ignoring all other options.
For example, `tar --version' might return:

     tar (GNU tar) 1.13.24

The first occurrence of `tar' in the result above is the program name
in the package (for example, `rmt' is another program), while the
second occurrence of `tar' is the name of the package itself,
containing possibly many programs.  The package is currently named
`tar', after the name of the main program it contains(1).

   Another thing you might want to do is checking the spelling or
meaning of some particular `tar' option, without resorting to this
manual, for once you have carefully read it.  GNU `tar' has a short help
feature, triggerable through the `--help' option.  By using this
option, `tar' will print a usage message listing all available options
on standard output, then exit successfully, without doing anything else
and ignoring all other options.  Even if this is only a brief summary,
it may be several screens long.  So, if you are not using some kind of
scrollable window, you might prefer to use something like:

     $ tar --help | less

presuming, here, that you like using `less' for a pager.  Other popular
pagers are `more' and `pg'.  If you know about some KEYWORD which
interests you and do not want to read all the `--help' output, another
common idiom is doing:

     tar --help | grep KEYWORD

for getting only the pertinent lines.

   The perceptive reader would have noticed some contradiction in the
previous paragraphs.  It is written that both `--version' and `--help'
print something, and have all other options ignored.  In fact, they
cannot ignore each other, and one of them has to win.  We do not
specify which is stronger, here; experiment if you really wonder!

   The short help output is quite succinct, and you might have to get
back to the full documentation for precise points.  If you are reading
this paragraph, you already have the `tar' manual in some form.  This
manual is available in printed form, as a kind of small book.  It may
printed out of the GNU `tar' distribution, provided you have TeX
already installed somewhere, and a laser printer around.  Just configure
the distribution, execute the command `make dvi', then print
`doc/tar.dvi' the usual way (contact your local guru to know how).  If
GNU `tar' has been conveniently installed at your place, this manual is
also available in interactive, hypertextual form as an Info file.  Just
call `info tar' or, if you do not have the `info' program handy, use
the Info reader provided within GNU Emacs, calling `tar' from the main
Info menu.

   There is currently no `man' page for GNU `tar'.  If you observe such
a `man' page on the system you are running, either it does not long to
GNU `tar', or it has not been produced by GNU.  Currently, GNU `tar'
documentation is provided in Texinfo format only, if we except, of
course, the short result of `tar --help'.

   ---------- Footnotes ----------

   (1) There are plans to merge the `cpio' and `tar' packages into a
single one which would be called `paxutils'.  So, who knows if, one of
this days, the `--version' would not yield `tar (GNU paxutils) 3.2'