Which of the following commands creates an archive file work.tar from the contents of the directory ./work/?

--new is not a valid tar option; the correct long-form option for creating an archive is --create.

The -c flag tells tar to create a new archive, and the -f flag specifies the archive filename that follows it. Together, 'tar -cf work.tar ./work/' correctly creates work.tar from the contents of ./work/. This is the standard POSIX-compliant syntax for archive creation.

--create is a valid long-form flag, but 'content' is not a recognized option and the command syntax is malformed.

tar requires at least one operation flag (-c, -x, -t, etc.); omitting it results in an error because tar does not know what action to perform.

This syntax is entirely invalid - 'work' is not a tar operation or valid filename argument in this position, and shell redirection cannot substitute for proper tar flag usage.