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. Optional 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 for (i in *.v) ar r lib.a $i.

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 r.

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 archive 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 contents and suppresses the warning.

ar cr arch.a manifest *.tar.gz Replace the contents of arch.a with the manifest file and all the gzip(1)'d tar files in the current directory.

/tmp/art.*.*

temporaries