> As far as I can tell, this is not a bug, but the way pipelines work,
> i.e. the  result of a pipeline (here the combination of tar and
> split) is the result of the last command in the pipeline. If you
> want the combination to fail if tar fails, you can use e.g.
> set -o pipefail in bash or read PIPESTATUS. For other shells,
> see e.g. http://cfajohnson.com/shell/cus-faq-2.html#Q11
> 
> 
> Rainer

Thanks Rainer, that is a very good hint and is working for me!
But why is this not a bug? In what case is it useful to ignore a 
non-zero exit code in a pipeline?

Thanks!

Best regards,
Alexander