That's really what munificent was arguing too though -- that the long-form options are preferable for scripting, but that no one prefers "tar --extract --verbos

That's really what munificent was arguing too though -- that the long-form options are preferable for scripting, but that no one prefers "tar --extract --verbose --compressed --file" to "tar -xzvf" when you just have to extract a file on the command line (in fact, many people don't even bother with the "-", "v", or "z", opting for "tar xf"). This optional brevity is important for utilities.