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GNU Development Tools AR(1)

NAME

ar - create, modify, and extract from archives

SYNOPSIS

ar [-X32_64] [-]p[mod [relpos] [count]] archive [member...]

DESCRIPTION

The GNU ar program creates, modifies, and extracts from

archives. An archive is a single file holding a collection

of other files in a structure that makes it possible to retrieve the original individual files (called members of

the archive).

The original files' contents, mode (permissions), timestamp,

owner, and group are preserved in the archive, and can be

restored on extraction.

GNU ar can maintain archives whose members have names of any

length; however, depending on how ar is configured on your

system, a limit on member-name length may be imposed for

compatibility with archive formats maintained with other

tools. If it exists, the limit is often 15 characters

(typical of formats related to a.out) or 16 characters

(typical of formats related to coff).

ar is considered a binary utility because archives of this

sort are most often used as libraries holding commonly

needed subroutines.

ar creates an index to the symbols defined in relocatable

object modules in the archive when you specify the modifier

s. Once created, this index is updated in the archive

whenever ar makes a change to its contents (save for the q

update operation). An archive with such an index speeds up

linking to the library, and allows routines in the library

to call each other without regard to their placement in the

archive.

You may use nm -s or nm --print-armap to list this index

table. If an archive lacks the table, another form of ar

called ranlib can be used to add just the table.

GNU ar can optionally create a thin archive, which contains

a symbol index and references to the original copies of the

member files of the archives. Such an archive is useful for

building libraries for use within a local build, where the

relocatable objects are expected to remain available, and

copying the contents of each object would only waste time

and space. Thin archives are also flattened, so that adding

one or more archives to a thin archive will add the elements

of the nested archive individually. The paths to the

elements of the archive are stored relative to the archive

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GNU Development Tools AR(1) itself.

GNU ar is designed to be compatible with two different

facilities. You can control its activity using command-line

options, like the different varieties of ar on Unix systems;

or, if you specify the single command-line option -M, you

can control it with a script supplied via standard input,

like the MRI "librarian" program.

OPTIONS

GNU ar allows you to mix the operation code p and modifier

flags mod in any order, within the first command-line

argument.

If you wish, you may begin the first command-line argument

with a dash. The p keyletter specifies what operation to execute; it may be any of the following, but you must specify only one of them:

d Delete modules from the archive. Specify the names of

modules to be deleted as member...; the archive is

untouched if you specify no files to delete.

If you specify the v modifier, ar lists each module as

it is deleted.

m Use this operation to move members in an archive.

The ordering of members in an archive can make a

difference in how programs are linked using the library,

if a symbol is defined in more than one member.

If no modifiers are used with "m", any members you name

in the member arguments are moved to the end of the

archive; you can use the a, b, or i modifiers to move

them to a specified place instead.

p Print the specified members of the archive, to the

standard output file. If the v modifier is specified,

show the member name before copying its contents to

standard output.

If you specify no member arguments, all the files in the

archive are printed.

q Quick append; Historically, add the files member... to

the end of archive, without checking for replacement.

The modifiers a, b, and i do not affect this operation;

new members are always placed at the end of the archive.

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GNU Development Tools AR(1)

The modifier v makes ar list each file as it is

appended. Since the point of this operation is speed, the

archive's symbol table index is not updated, even if it

already existed; you can use ar s or ranlib explicitly

to update the symbol table index. However, too many different systems assume quick append

rebuilds the index, so GNU ar implements q as a synonym

for r.

r Insert the files member... into archive (with

replacement). This operation differs from q in that any

previously existing members are deleted if their names

match those being added. If one of the files named in member... does not exist,

ar displays an error message, and leaves undisturbed any

existing members of the archive matching that name.

By default, new members are added at the end of the

file; but you may use one of the modifiers a, b, or i to request placement relative to some existing member. The modifier v used with this operation elicits a line of output for each file inserted, along with one of the letters a or r to indicate whether the file was appended (no old member deleted) or replaced.

t Display a table listing the contents of archive, or

those of the files listed in member... that are present

in the archive. Normally only the member name is shown;

if you also want to see the modes (permissions), timestamp, owner, group, and size, you can request that by also specifying the v modifier.

If you do not specify a member, all files in the archive

are listed.

If there is more than one file with the same name (say,

fie) in an archive (say b.a), ar t b.a fie lists only

the first instance; to see them all, you must ask for a

complete listing---in our example, ar t b.a.

x Extract members (named member) from the archive. You

can use the v modifier with this operation, to request

that ar list each name as it extracts it.

If you do not specify a member, all files in the archive

are extracted.

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GNU Development Tools AR(1)

Files cannot be extracted from a thin archive.

A number of modifiers (mod) may immediately follow the p

keyletter, to specify variations on an operation's behavior:

a Add new files after an existing member of the archive.

If you use the modifier a, the name of an existing

archive member must be present as the relpos argument,

before the archive specification.

b Add new files before an existing member of the archive.

If you use the modifier b, the name of an existing

archive member must be present as the relpos argument,

before the archive specification. (same as i).

c Create the archive. The specified archive is always

created if it did not exist, when you request an update.

But a warning is issued unless you specify in advance

that you expect to create it, by using this modifier.

f Truncate names in the archive. GNU ar will normally

permit file names of any length. This will cause it to

create archives which are not compatible with the native

ar program on some systems. If this is a concern, the f

modifier may be used to truncate file names when putting

them in the archive.

i Insert new files before an existing member of the

archive. If you use the modifier i, the name of an

existing archive member must be present as the relpos

argument, before the archive specification. (same as

b). l This modifier is accepted but not used.

N Uses the count parameter. This is used if there are

multiple entries in the archive with the same name.

Extract or delete instance count of the given name from

the archive.

o Preserve the original dates of members when extracting them. If you do not specify this modifier, files

extracted from the archive are stamped with the time of

extraction. P Use the full path name when matching names in the

archive. GNU ar can not create an archive with a full

path name (such archives are not POSIX complaint), but

other archive creators can. This option will cause GNU

ar to match file names using a complete path name, which

can be convenient when extracting a single file from an

archive created by another tool.

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GNU Development Tools AR(1)

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 table, you must omit the S

modifier on the last execution of ar, or you must run

ranlib on the archive.

T Make the specified archive a thin archive. If it

already exists and is a regular archive, the existing

members must be present in the same directory as

archive.

u Normally, ar r... inserts all files listed into the

archive. If you would like to insert only those of the

files you list that are newer than existing members of

the same names, use this modifier. The u modifier is allowed only for the operation r (replace). In

particular, the combination qu is not allowed, since

checking the timestamps would lose any speed advantage from the operation q. v This modifier requests the verbose version of an operation. Many operations display additional information, such as filenames processed, when the modifier v is appended.

V This modifier shows the version number of ar.

ar ignores an initial option spelt -X32_64, for

compatibility with AIX. The behaviour produced by this

option is the default for GNU ar. ar does not support any

of the other -X options; in particular, it does not support

-X32 which is the default for AIX ar.

@file

Read command-line options from file. The options read

are inserted in place of the original @file option. If

file does not exist, or cannot be read, then the option will be treated literally, and not removed.

Options in file are separated by whitespace. A

whitespace character may be included in an option by

surrounding the entire option in either single or double

quotes. Any character (including a backslash) may be

included by prefixing the character to be included with

a backslash. The file may itself contain additional

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GNU Development Tools AR(1) @file options; any such options will be processed recursively.

2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the

Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with

no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy

of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

ATTRIBUTES

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

______________________________________________

| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |

|____________________|_________________________|_

| Availability | developer/gnu-binutils|

|____________________|_________________________|_

| Interface Stability| Uncommitted |

|____________________|________________________|

NOTES Source for GNU binutils is available on

http://opensolaris.org.

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