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.