input/output redirection with tar

[e-letter]

Readers,

I tried without success the following command syntax

tar --extract --file=/path/to/tarball < /path/to/list/of/files.txt

To my surprise this failed. If the 'files.txt' contained:

text1 text2 text3

The command syntax is successful for:

tar --extract --file=/path/to/tarball text1 text2 text3

Is there a reason why redirect does not work with tar command?

Thanks.