date and time created 91/04/12 16:25:12 by bostic

[unix-history] / usr / src / usr.bin / ar / ar.1

.\" Copyright (c) 1990 The Regents of the University of California.
.\" All rights reserved.
.\"
.\" This code is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by
.\" Hugh Smith at The University of Guelph.
.\"
.\" %sccs.include.redist.man%
.\"
.\"	@(#)ar.1	6.10 (Berkeley) %G%
.\"
.TH AR 1 ""
.AT 3
.SH NAME
ar \- create and maintain library archives
.SH SYNOPSIS
.nf
.ft B
ar -d [-Tv] archive file ...
ar -m [-Tv] archive file ...
ar -m [-abiTv] position archive file ...
ar -p [-Tv] archive [file ...]
ar -q [-cTv] archive file ...
ar -r [-cuTv] archive file ...
ar -r [-abciuTv] position archive file ...
ar -t [-Tv] archive [file ...]
ar -x [-ouTv] archive [file ...]
.fi
.ft R
.SH DESCRIPTION
The
.I ar
utility creates and maintains groups of files combined into an archive.
Once an archive has been created, new files can be added and existing
files can be extracted, deleted, or replaced.
.PP
Files are named in the archive by a single component, i.e., if a file
referenced by a path containing a slash (``/'') is archived it will be
named by the last component of that path.
When matching paths listed on the command line against file names stored
in the archive, only the last component of the path will be compared.
.PP
All informational and error messages use the path listed on the command
line, if any was specified, otherwise the name in the archive is used.
If multiple files in the archive have the same name, and paths are listed
on the command line to ``select'' archive files for an operation, only the
.B first
file with a matching name will be selected.
.PP
The normal use of
.I ar
is for the creation and maintenance of libraries suitable for use with
the loader (see
.IR ld (1))
although it is not restricted to this purpose.
The options are as follows:
.TP
\-a
A positioning modifier used with the options \-r and \-m.
The files are entered or moved
.B after
the archive member
.IR position ,
which must be specified.
.TP
\-b
A positioning modifier used with the options \-r and \-m.
The files are entered or moved
.B before
the archive member
.IR position ,
which must be specified.
.TP
\-c
Whenever an archive is created, an informational message to that effect
is written to standard error.
If the \-c option is specified,
.I ar
creates the archive silently.
.TP
\-d
Delete the specified archive files.
.TP
\-i
Identical to the \-b option.
.TP
\-m
Move the specified archive files within the archive.
If one of the options \-a, \-b or \-i are specified, the files are moved
before or after the
.I position
file in the archive.
If none of those options are specified, the files are moved
to the end of the archive.
.TP
\-o
Set the access and modification times of extracted files to the
modification time of the file when it was entered into the archive.
This will fail if the user is not the owner of the extracted file
or the super-user.
.TP
\-p
Write the contents of the specified archive files to the standard output.
If no files are specified, the contents of all the files in the archive
are written in the order they appear in the archive.
.TP
\-q
(Quickly) append the specified files to the archive.
If the archive does not exist a new archive file is created.
Much faster than the \-r option, when creating a large archive
piece-by-piece, as no checking is done to see if the files already
exist in the archive.
.TP
\-r
Replace or add the specified files to the archive.
If the archive does not exist a new archive file is created.
Files that replace existing files do not change the order of the files
within the archive.
New files are appended to the archive unless one of the options \-a, \-b
or \-i is specified.
.TP
\-T
Select and/or name archive members using only the first fifteen characters
of the archive member or command line file name.
The historic archive format had sixteen bytes for the name, but some
historic archiver and loader implementations were unable to handle names
that used the entire space.
This means that file names that are not unique in their first fifteen
characters can subsequently be confused.
A warning message is printed to the standard error output if any file
names are truncated.
(See
.IR ar (5)
for more information.)
.TP
\-t
List the specified files in the order in which they appear in the archive,
each on a separate line.
If no files are specified, all files in the archive are listed.
.TP
\-u
Update files.
When used with the \-r option, files in the archive will be replaced
only if the disk file has a newer modification time than the file in
the archive.
When used with the \-x option, files in the archive will be extracted
only if the archive file has a newer modification time than the file
on disk.
.TP
\-v
Provide verbose output.
When used with the \-d, \-m, \-q or \-x options,
.I ar
gives a file-by-file description of the archive modification.
This description consists of three, white-space separated fields: the
option letter, a dash (``-'') and the file name.
When used with the \-r option,
.I ar
displays the description as above, but the initial letter is an ``a'' if
the file is added to the archive and an ``r'' if the file replaces a file
already in the archive.
.IP
When used with the \-p option,
the name of each printed file is written to the standard output before
the contents of the file, preceded by a single newline character, and
followed by two newline characters, enclosed in less-than (``<'') and
greater-than (``>'') characters.
.IP
When used with the \-t option,
.I ar
displays an ``ls -l'' style listing of information about the members of
the archive.
This listing consists of eight, white-space separated fields:
the file permissions (see
.IR strmode (3)),
the decimal user and group ID's, separated by a single slash (``/''),
the file size (in bytes), the file modification time (in the
.IR date (1)
format ``%b %e %H:%M %Y''), and the name of the file.
.TP
\-x
Extract the specified archive members into the files named by the command
line arguments.
If no members are specified, all the members of the archive are extracted into
the current directory.
.IP
If the file does not exist, it is created; if it does exist, the owner
and group will be unchanged.
The file access and modification times are the time of the extraction
(but see the \-o option).
The file permissions will be set to those of the file when it was entered
into the archive; this will fail if the user is not the owner of the
extracted file or the super-user.
.PP
The
.I ar
utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.
.SH ENVIRONMENT
.TP
TMPDIR
The pathname of the directory to use when creating temporary files.
.SH FILES
.TP 14
/tmp
default temporary file directory
.TP 14
ar.XXXXXX
temporary file names
.SH COMPATIBILITY
By default,
.I ar
writes archives that may be incompatible with historic archives, as
the format used for storing archive members with names longer than
fifteen characters has changed.
This implementation of
.I ar
is backward compatible with previous versions of
.I ar
in that it can read and write (using the \-T option) historic archives.
The \-T option is provided for compatibility only, and will be deleted
in a future release.
See
.IR ar (5)
for more information.
.SH STANDARDS
The
.I ar
utility is expected to offer a superset of the POSIX 1003.2 functionality.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
ld(1), ranlib(1), strmode(3), ar(5)