That point is always raised on every criticism of tar (that it's good at tape).
Yes! It is! But it's awful at archive files, which is what it's used for nowadays and what's being discussed right now.
Over the past 50 years some people did try to improve tar. People did develop ways to append a file table at the end of an archive file. Maintaining compatibility with tapes, all tar utilities, and piping.
Similarly, driven people did extend (pk)zip to cover all the unix-y needs. In fact the current zip utility still supports permissions and symlinks to this day.
But despite those better methods, people keep pushing og tar. Because it's good at tape archival. Sigh.
Yes! It is! But it's awful at archive files, which is what it's used for nowadays and what's being discussed right now.
Over the past 50 years some people did try to improve tar. People did develop ways to append a file table at the end of an archive file. Maintaining compatibility with tapes, all tar utilities, and piping.
Similarly, driven people did extend (pk)zip to cover all the unix-y needs. In fact the current zip utility still supports permissions and symlinks to this day.
But despite those better methods, people keep pushing og tar. Because it's good at tape archival. Sigh.