AR
From Just Solve the File Format Problem
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'''ar''' is a non-compressed archive format for [[Unix]]-style operating systems. It was mostly superseded by [[Tape Archive|tar]] for general archiving use, but persists in use for specialized applications involving linkable libraries for development. | '''ar''' is a non-compressed archive format for [[Unix]]-style operating systems. It was mostly superseded by [[Tape Archive|tar]] for general archiving use, but persists in use for specialized applications involving linkable libraries for development. | ||
Revision as of 14:27, 14 August 2021
- For another "ar" format, see ar (Haruhiko Okumura).
ar is a non-compressed archive format for Unix-style operating systems. It was mostly superseded by tar for general archiving use, but persists in use for specialized applications involving linkable libraries for development.
Contents |
Overview
There are at least 5 different variants of the ar file format since it has never been formally standardized: AIX(big), AIX(small), Coherent, BSD, and GNU.
Examples
To list the contents of an archive, using the ar utility:
$ ar tv example.a
To extract the contents of an archive:
$ ar xvo example.a
Software
- GNU Binutils → ar
- llvm-ar
- Deark
Sample files
References
- Wikipedia page for the ar archiver
- IBM AIX documentation on scribd here (page 386+; someone might find a better accessible version)
- Also from IBM is this description (and this for the "small" variant)
- The Microsoft PE/COFF documentation also has a section on .lib files which use the same format
