tar-1.13.25: --unlink broken

[Simon Gerraty]

The --unlink option does not work correctly in recent versions of GNU
tar.  In version 1.13 and earlier, one could use:

tar --unlink -zxf file.tar.gz

to unpack file.tar.gz, taking care to unlink files as you go - to
avoid busy text files when say replacing tar itself.

As of 1.13.25 (at least on Red Hat Linux) this no longer works if the
tar file contains any directory entries (which it should to ensure
directory permissions are preserved).  With this version we get:

$ tar-1.13.25 --unlink -zxf jakarta-tomcat-4.1.18.tar.gz
tar-1.13.25: jakarta-tomcat-4.1.18: Cannot unlink: Is a directory
tar-1.13.25: jakarta-tomcat-4.1.18/webapps: Cannot unlink: Is a directory
tar-1.13.25: jakarta-tomcat-4.1.18/webapps/tomcat-docs: Cannot unlink: Is a 
directory
..
tar-1.13.25: jakarta-tomcat-4.1.18/work: Cannot unlink: Is a directory
tar-1.13.25: Error exit delayed from previous errors
$ echo $?
2
$

Thanks
--sjg