To be fair, gnu tar 1.31, 2019-01-02, added `--zstd` (and other automatic .zst support). So that support has been there for a good 7 years and 4 months at the time of writing.
>>> 'x\u2009 a'.split()
['x', 'a']
# incorrect; in bytes mode, `\S` doesn't know about unicode whitespace
>>> list(re.finditer(br'\S+', 'x\u2009 a'.encode()))
[<re.Match object; span=(0, 4), match=b'x\xe2\x80\x89'>, <re.Match object; span=(7, 8), match=b'a'>]
# correct, in unicode mode
>>> list(re.finditer(r'\S+', 'x\u2009 a'))
[<re.Match object; span=(0, 1), match='x'>, <re.Match object; span=(5, 6), match='a'>]