From: Eric Hodel <drbrain@...7.net>
Date: 2008-01-13T05:39:43+09:00
Subject: Re: ar archives

On Jan 11, 2008, at 06:03 AM, Daniel Brumbaugh Keeney wrote:

> Is there cross-platform way of extracting or creating `ar' archives?

ar(5) on my system says this:

> A file created with ar begins with the ``magic'' string "!<arch> 
> \n".  The rest of the archive is made up of objects, each of which  
> is composed of a header for a file, a possible file name, and the  
> file contents.  The header is portable between machine  
> architectures, and, if the file contents are printable, the archive  
> is itself printable.

and proceeds to describe the latest version of the format which fits  
in about 26 lines.  It should be really easy.

It makes a note at the bottom of the magic strings for older versions  
of ar, but these are probably ancient.