AR(1)                      OpenBSD Reference Manual                      AR(1)

NAME
     ar - create and maintain library archives



SYNOPSIS
     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 [-CouTv] archive [file ...]

DESCRIPTION
     The 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.

     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.

     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 first file with a matching name will be selected.

     The normal use of ar is for the creation and maintenance of libraries
     suitable for use with the loader (see ld(1))  although it is not re-
     stricted to this purpose.  The options are as follows:

     -a      A positioning modifier used with the options -r and -m. The files
             are entered or moved after the archive member position, which
             must be specified.

     -b      A positioning modifier used with the options -r and -m. The files
             are entered or moved before the archive member position, which
             must be specified.

     -c      Whenever an archive is created, an informational message to that
             effect is written to standard error.  If the -c option is speci-
             fied, ar creates the archive silently.

     -C      Prevent extracted files from replacing like-named files in the
             file system.

     -d      Delete the specified archive files.

     -i      Identical to the -b option.

     -m      Move the specified archive files within the archive.  If one of
             the options -a, -b or -i are specified, the files are moved be-
             fore or after the position file in the archive.  If none of those
             options are specified, the files are moved to the end of the
             archive.

     -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 ex-

             tracted file or the super-user.

     -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.

     -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 ex-
             ist in the archive.

     -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 with-
             in the archive.  New files are appended to the archive unless one
             of the options -a, -b or -i is specified.

     -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 han-
             dle names that used the entire space.  This means that file names
             that are not unique in their first fifteen characters can subse-
             quently be confused.  A warning message is printed to the stan-
             dard error if any file names are truncated.  (See ar(5) for more
             information.)

     -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.

     -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.

     -v      Provide verbose output.  When used with the -d, -m, -q or -x op-
             tions, ar gives a file-by-file description of the archive modifi-
             cation.  This description consists of three, white-space separat-
             ed fields: the option letter, a dash (`-') and the file name.
             When used with the -r option, 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.

             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 new-
             line characters, enclosed in less-than (`<') and greater-than
             (`>') characters.

             When used with the -t option, 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 strmode(3)),  the decimal user and group IDs,
             separated by a single slash (`/'), the file size (in bytes), the
             file modification time (in the date(1) format ``%b %e %H:%M
             %Y''), and the name of the file.

     -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.
             If the file does not exist, it is created; if it does exist, the
             owner and group will be unchanged.  The file access and modifica-
             tion times are the time of the extraction (but see the -o op-
             tion).  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.

     The ar utility exits 0 on success or >0 if an error occurred.

ENVIRONMENT
     TMPDIR  The pathname of the directory to use when creating temporary
             files.

FILES
     /tmp           default temporary file directory
     ar.XXXXXXXXXX  temporary file names

COMPATIBILITY
     By default, 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 ar is
     backward compatible with previous versions of 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
     ar(5) for more information.

STANDARDS
     The ar utility is expected to offer a superset of the IEEE Std1003.2
     (``POSIX.2'') functionality.

SEE ALSO
     ld(1),  ranlib(1),  strmode(3),  ar(5)

OpenBSD 2.6                      June 29, 1993                               3