GNU tar's --null option

Question

The GNU tar's manpage has this to say about the --null option:

-T reads null-terminated names, disable -C

I know that --null is useful in combination with find ... -print0, but what is it about disable -C? How do null-terminated names have anything to do with the -C option, which is supposed to change into the directory?

What does the man page actually mean? I can think of several possibilities:

1. --null conflicts with -C, I simply can't use both together;
2. I can, but should not use --null and -C together because the result may be wrong;
3. --null automatically disables -C;

Which meaning is it?

EDIT: the version of GNU tar I have is 1.27.1, on Debian Jessie.

Answer 1

I suspect this is a glitch. The online info version doesn't say anything about disable -C -- which as you correctly argue would not make sense -- but does say:

... `--null' also disables special handling for file names that begin with dash (similar to `--verbatim-files-from' option).

This makes more sense; a newline-separated list of filenames can be generated by a tool (like find) OR can be typed easily enough by a human who might well want to specify options also, but a null-separated list is much more likely generated by a tool and thus only filenames.