I use this locally as well, simply because I know and prefer tar's behavior to that of cp. For example tar cf - . | (cd /some/where/else; tar xvf -). It's pos

I use this locally as well, simply because I know and prefer tar's behavior to that of cp. For example tar cf - . | (cd /some/where/else; tar xvf -). It's possible to do this using cpio as well but it always seemed like cpio needed so many more switches to do the same thing.