tar -xf
is not really special combining short options isn’t uncommon.
Where tar is nonstandard is that you can leave out the -
, tar xf
is actually how POSIX specifies it. And we’ve kinda come full circle on that one with many modern utilities using a command syntax, you can read tar xf
as “tar extract file” just as you can read git pull
as, well, “git pull”.
If you want to see a standard command with truly non-standard syntax have a look at dd
.