> it's pretty clear from the context

I think that largely depends on who's using the tools and how acquainted they are with command line tools. An absolute beginner likely will not know what tar's 'f' flag does, or assume something else.

> OTOH, sometimes I'll copy-paste some perl or awk dark magic from Stack Overflow, and then try modify it piecemeal to fit my case. That's an incantation :)

And I absolutely have no qualms doing the same when push comes to shove. Ain't nobody always got the time. ;-)