Then, this explains why. BTW, this is an expected Shell behavior, specified in the POSIX standard: If a filename begins with a <period> ( '.' ), the <period>

Then, this explains why. BTW, this is an expected Shell behavior, specified in the POSIX standard: If a filename begins with a <period> ( '.' ), the <period> shall be explicitly matched by using a <period> as the first character of the pattern or immediately following a <slash> character. The leading <period> shall not be matched by: * The <asterisk> or <question-mark> special characters https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V3_chap02.html#tag_18_13_03 https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V... Interesting fact about the FreeBSD tar's origins: GNU tar was included as the standard system tar in FreeBSD beginning with FreeBSD 1.0. This is a complete re-implementation based on the libarchive(3) library. It was first released with FreeBSD 5.4 in May, 2005. https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=tar https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=tar My personal journey with FreeBSD began with version 5.3 (the first stable release on the 5th branch) in November 2004. I was completely unaware of such a significant tar change, and apparently I didn't care at the time. However, the entire 5th branch has been so revolutionary compared to the 4th branch that this change is just a drop in the bucket ;)