*** mc -V

GNU Midnight Commander 4.8.0-pre2
Built with GLib 2.24.2
Using the S-Lang library with terminfo database
With builtin Editor
With subshell support as default
With support for background operations
With mouse support on xterm and Linux console
With support for X11 events
With internationalization support
With multiple codepages support
Virtual File Systems: cpiofs, tarfs, sfs, extfs, ftpfs, fish
Data types: char: 8; int: 32; long: 32; void *: 32; size_t: 32; off_t: 64;

*** file ~/test.tar; file --version

/home/andrey/test.tar: POSIX tar archive (GNU)
file-5.04
magic file from /etc/magic:/usr/share/misc/magic

*** strace -fF -p `pidof -s mc` (related to openning ~/test.tar)

rt_sigaction(SIGINT, {SIG_IGN, [], 0}, NULL, 8) = 0
select(5, [3 4], NULL, NULL, NULL)      = 1 (in [3])
select(4, [3], NULL, NULL, {10, 0})     = 1 (in [3], left {9, 999986})
read(3, "\r", 1)                        = 1
ioctl(0, TIOCLINUX, 0xbf9a2f7c)         = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)
access("/home/andrey/.local/share/mc/mc.ext", R_OK) = 0
open("/home/andrey/.local/share/mc/mc.ext", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = 8
fstat64(8, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=18087, ...}) = 0
read(8, "# Midnight Commander 3.0 extensi"..., 18087) = 18087
close(8)                                = 0
stat64("/home/andrey/test.tar", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=136724480, ...}) = 0
lstat64("/home/andrey/tmp/mc-andrey", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0700, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
getuid32()                              = 1000
gettimeofday({1316599632, 400952}, NULL) = 0
open("/home/andrey/tmp/mc-andrey/mcextpJShDb", O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_EXCL|O_TRUNC|O_LARGEFILE, 0600) = 8
fcntl64(8, F_GETFL)                     = 0x8002 (flags O_RDWR|O_LARGEFILE)
fstat64(8, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0600, st_size=0, ...}) = 0
mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb7185000
_llseek(8, 0, [0], SEEK_CUR)            = 0
write(8, "#! /bin/sh\n\n/bin/rm -f /home/and"..., 62) = 62
close(8)                                = 0
munmap(0xb7185000, 4096)                = 0
unlink("/home/andrey/tmp/mc-andrey/mcextpJShDb") = 0
chdir("/home/andrey/test.tar#utar")     = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
select(4, [3], NULL, NULL, {0, 0})      = 0 (Timeout)
select(4, [3], NULL, NULL, {0, 0})      = 0 (Timeout)
gettimeofday({1316599632, 407323}, NULL) = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGINT, {0x8070320, [], 0}, NULL, 8) = 0