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AR(5)                         File Formats Manual                        AR(5)

NAME
     ar - a.out archive (library) file format

SYNOPSIS
     #include <ar.h>

DESCRIPTION
     The archive command ar combines several files into one.  Archives are
     mainly used as libraries of object files intended to be loaded using the
     link-editor ld(1).

     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.

     The header is made up of six variable length ASCII fields, followed by a
     two character trailer.  The fields are the object name (16 characters),
     the file last modification time (12 characters), the user and group id's
     (each 6 characters), the file mode (8 characters) and the file size (10
     characters).  All numeric fields are in decimal, except for the file mode
     which is in octal.

     The modification time is the file st_mtime field, i.e., CUT seconds since
     the epoch.  The user and group id's are the file st_uid and st_gid
     fields.  The file mode is the file st_mode field.  The file size is the
     file st_size field.  The two-byte trailer is the string "`\n".

     Only the name field has any provision for overflow.  If any file name is
     more than 16 characters in length or contains an embedded space, the
     string "#1/" followed by the ASCII length of the name is written in the
     name field.  The file size (stored in the archive header) is incremented
     by the length of the name.  The name is then written immediately
     following the archive header.

     Any unused characters in any of these fields are written as space
     characters.  If any fields are their particular maximum number of
     characters in length, there will be no separation between the fields.

     Objects in the archive are always an even number of bytes long; files
     which are an odd number of bytes long are padded with a newline ("\n")
     character, although the size in the header does not reflect this.

COMPATIBILITY
     The current a.out archive format is not specified by any standard.

     ELF systems use the ar format specified by the AT&T System V Release 4
     UNIX ABI, with the same headers but different long file name handling.

SEE ALSO
     ar(1), stat(2)

HISTORY
     There have been at least four ar formats.  The first was denoted by the
     leading "magic" number 0177555 (stored as type int).  These archives were
     almost certainly created on a 16-bit machine, and contain headers made up
     of five fields.  The fields are the object name (8 characters), the file
     last modification time (type long), the user id (type char), the file
     mode (type char) and the file size (type unsigned int).  Files were
     padded to an even number of bytes.

     The second was denoted by the leading "magic" number 0177545 (stored as
     type int).  These archives may have been created on either 16 or 32-bit
     machines, and contain headers made up of six fields.  The fields are the
     object name (14 characters), the file last modification time (type long),
     the user and group id's (each type char), the file mode (type int), and
     the file size (type long).  Files were padded to an even number of bytes.

     Both of these historical formats may be read with ar(1).

     The current archive format (without support for long character names and
     names with embedded spaces) was introduced in 4.0BSD.  The headers were
     the same as the current format, with the exception that names longer than
     16 characters were truncated, and names with embedded spaces (and often
     trailing spaces) were not supported.  It has been extended for these
     reasons, as described above.  This format first appeared in 4.4BSD.

BUGS
     The <ar.h> header file, and the ar manual page, do not currently describe
     the ELF archive format.

NetBSD 10.99                     June 1, 1994                     NetBSD 10.99