AR(1) AR(1)
NAME
ar - archive maintainer
SYNOPSIS
ar key [ posname ] afile [ file ... ]
DESCRIPTION
Ar maintains groups of files combined into a single archive
file, afile. The main use of ar is to produce and manipulate
UNIX archive files, for instance to create program packages
for Debian Linux. Note that only iar(10.1) can manage
archives used as object file libraries by the Inferno and
Plan 9 loaders.
Key is one character from the set drqtpmx, optionally con-
catenated with one or more of vuaibclo. The files are con-
stituents of the archive afile. The meanings of the key
characters are:
d Delete files from the archive file.
r Replace files in the archive file, or add them if miss-
ing. Optional modifiers are
u Replace only files with modified dates later than
that of the archive.
a Place new files after posname in the archive
rather than at the end.
b or i
Place new files before posname in the archive.
q Quick. Append files to the end of the archive without
checking for duplicates. Avoids quadratic behavior in
`for (i in *.v) ar r lib.a $i'.
t List a table of contents of the archive. If names are
given, only those files are listed.
p Print the named files in the archive.
m Move the named files to the end or elsewhere, specified
as with `r'.
o Preserve the access and modification times of files
extracted with the x command.
x Extract the named files. If no names are given, all
files in the archive are extracted. In neither case
does x alter the archive file.
v Verbose. Give a file-by-file description of the making
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AR(1) AR(1)
of a new archive file from the old archive and the con-
stituent files. With p, precede each file with a name.
With t, give a long listing of all information about
the files, somewhat like a listing by ls(1), showing
mode uid/gid size date name
c Create. Normally ar will create a new archive when
afile does not exist, and give a warning. Option c
discards any old contents and suppresses the warning.
EXAMPLE
ar cr arch.a manifest *.tar.gz
Replace the contents of `arch.a' with the manifest file
and all the gzip(1)'d tar files in the current direc-
tory.
FILES
/tmp/art.*.* temporaries
SOURCE
/appl/cmd/ar.b
SEE ALSO
2l(10.1), iar(10.1), ar(10.6)
BUGS
If the same file is mentioned twice in an argument list, it
may be put in the archive twice.
The file format used by this command is taken from UNIX, and
makes some invalid assumptions, for instance that user IDs
are numeric.
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