AR(1) BSD General Commands Manual AR(1)
NAME
ar -- create and maintain library archives
SYNOPSIS
ar -d [-TLsv] archive file ...
ar -m [-TLsv] archive file ...
ar -m [-abiTLsv] position archive file ...
ar -p [-TLsv] archive [file ...]
ar -q [-cTLsv] archive file ...
ar -r [-cuTLsv] archive file ...
ar -r [-abciuTLsv] position archive file ...
ar -t [-TLsv] archive [file ...]
ar -x [-ouTLsv] 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 restricted 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 specified, ar creates the archive silently.
-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 before 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
extracted 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 ar-chive archive
chive file is created. Much faster than the -r option, when creating a large archive piece-by-piece, piece-bypiece,
piece, as no checking is done to see if the files already exist 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 within
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 mem-ber member
ber 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 ar(5) for more information.)
-L Used the extended format to allow long archive member names. This is the default.
-s Write an object-file index into the archive, or update an existing one, even if no other change
is made to the archive. You may use this modifier flag either with any operation, or alone.
Running `ar s' on an archive is equivalent to running `ranlib' on it.
-S Do not generate an archive symbol table. This can speed up building a large library in several
steps. The resulting archive can not be used with the linker. In order to build a symbol ta-ble, table,
ble, you must omit the S modifier on the last execution of ar, or you must run ranlib on the
archive.
-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 modifica-tion modification
tion time than the file on disk.
-v Provide verbose output. When used with the -d, -m, -q or -x options, ar gives a file-by-file
description of the archive modification. This description consists of three, white-space sepa-rated separated
rated 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
newline 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 ID's, 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 direc-tory. directory.
tory.
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.
The ar utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.
ENVIRONMENT
TMPDIR The pathname of the directory to use when creating temporary files.
FILES
/tmp default temporary file directory
ar.XXXXXX
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 Std 1003.2 (``POSIX.2'') functionality.
SEE ALSO
ld(1), ranlib(1), strmode(3), ar(5)
Darwin July 27, 2005 Darwin
|