The -f - is redundant, AFAIK. Then, newer (at least GNU) tar has a -T option (or --files-from) which eliminates the need for xargs, and a -C option (or --directory) which eliminates the need for cd and the parentheses

This simplifies the script to 
tar c -C source -T mylist.txt | tar xC dest

[download]
(Tested with MinGW on Win7)

Of course, your script could be written right out of your head, while I had to open the man page for looking up the letter of that filelist option...

In reply to Re^2: Copying a list of files from a directory to a new directory by soonix
in thread Copying a list of files from a directory to a new directory by ramjamman

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