I'm a bit confused with the -c flag using bunzip2. 

The following line of code works well: 

```
ls -l
-> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 163 Oct 25 13:06 access_logs.tar.bz2
bunzip2 -c access_logs.tar.bz2 | tar -t

```

When I would attempt to use this code without the -c flag: 

```
bunzip2 access_logs.tar.bz2 | tar -t

```

I get the message: 

```
tar: This does not look like a tar archive
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors

```

But when showing the list `ls -l`: 

```
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 10240 Oct 25 13:06 access_logs.tar

```

Documentation says: 

> 
> The left side of the pipeline is bunzip –c access\_logs.tbz, which
>  decompresses the file but the (-c option) sends the output to the
>  screen. The output is redirected to tar –t. 
> 
> 
> 

According to the manual: 

```
   -c --stdout
          Compress or decompress to standard output. 

```

It seems that the decompression also works without the -c flag?