term% cat index.txt AR(1) General Commands Manual AR(1)
NAME
ar - archive and library 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 create and update library files for
the loaders 2l(1), etc. It can be used, though, for any similar pur‐
pose.
Key is one character from the set drqtpmx, optionally concatenated with
one or more of vuaibclo. The files are constituents 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 missing. Op‐
tional 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
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
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 ar‐
chive file.
v Verbose. Give a file-by-file description of the making of a new
archive file from the old archive and the constituent 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 con‐
tents and suppresses the warning.
l Local. Normally ar places its temporary files in the directory
/tmp. This option causes them to be placed in the local direc‐
tory.
When a d, r, or m key is specified and all members of the archive are
valid object files for the same architecture, ar inserts a table of
contents, required by the loaders, at the front of the library. The
table of contents is rebuilt whenever the archive is modified, except
when the q key is specified or when the table of contents is explicitly
moved or deleted.
EXAMPLE
ar cr lib.a *.o
Replace the contents of library with the object files in the
current directory.
FILES
/tmp/v*
temporaries
SOURCE
/sys/src/cmd/ar.c
SEE ALSO
2l(1), ar(6)
BUGS
If the same file is mentioned twice in an argument list, it may be put
in the archive twice.
This command predates Plan 9 and makes some invalid assumptions, for
instance that user id's are numeric.
AR(1)