Bug/unpleasant Feature in tar -X - Option

[Andreas Mattheiss]

Dear Gnu,

I happened to notice (the hard way) that tar version 1.13.17 does not honour an 
EXCLUDE - pattern specified as an entry in a file which is made known to tar 
with -X when there are trailing spaces in the line in question. I.e., when 
specifying an EXCLUDE - pattern in a file there must not be any trailing spaces 
at all. 

I find this highly confusing since you can spend hours on wondring why the last 
dump has again been unexpectedly large ... Unless there is good reason for this 
to be viewed a feature rather than a bug I would encourage you to permit 
trailing spaces in the exclude - file.

Thanks,

Andreas