If you are trying to create some tar files with exclude/include files 
and don't want to create a temporary tar file each time?

Use /dev/null as the destination.

For example:

/etc/inet# tar cvfX /dev/null /list_of_files_to_exclude *
a datemsk.ndpd 1K
a hosts 1K
a ike excluded
a inetd.conf 7K
a ipnodes 1K
a ipsecinit.sample 3K
a mipagent.conf.fa-sample 7K
a mipagent.conf.ha-sample 6K
a mipagent.conf-sample 7K
a netmasks 1K
a networks 1K
a ntp.client 1K
a ntp.server 3K
a protocols 2K
a secret/ 0K
a secret/ike.privatekeys/ 0K
a secret/ike.preshared 1K
a secret/ipseckeys.sample 1K
a services 5K
a slp.conf.example 6K
a sock2path 1K

(where the file /list_of_files_to_exclude contains the word ike)


You can see what it is/isn't doing without all those extra files 
laying around from testing different exclude lists.