should "tar t" map UIDs to usernames?

[Robert P. J. Day]

  i'm putting together a short script to compare behaviour of GNU tar
with BB tar, and the first discrepancy is in using "tar t":

[./d1/]
GNU tar
drwxr-xr-x rpjday/rpjday     0 2006-04-18 08:55:23 ./
drwxr-xr-x rpjday/rpjday     0 2006-04-18 08:55:04 ./d2/
-rw-r--r-- rpjday/rpjday     0 2006-04-18 08:55:04 ./d2/f2
drwxr-xr-x rpjday/rpjday     0 2006-04-18 08:55:00 ./d1/
-rw-r--r-- rpjday/rpjday     0 2006-04-18 08:55:00 ./d1/f1
BB tar
drwxr-xr-x 500/500         0 2006-04-18 08:55:23 .
drwxr-xr-x 500/500         0 2006-04-18 08:55:04 ./d2
-rw-r--r-- 500/500         0 2006-04-18 08:55:04 ./d2/f2
drwxr-xr-x 500/500         0 2006-04-18 08:55:00 ./d1
-rw-r--r-- 500/500         0 2006-04-18 08:55:00 ./d1/f1

as you can see, default GNU tar is to map UIDs to names, while BB tar
doesn't.  to be consistent, should it?

rday

p.s.  i realize i can alter GNU tar's behaviour with "--numeric-owner"
but that doesn't really address the issue.