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nomarch(1)                    Archive Extraction                    nomarch(1)


NAME

       nomarch - extract `.arc' archives


SYNOPSIS

       nomarch [-hlptUv] [archive.arc] [match1 [match2 ... ]]


DESCRIPTION

       nomarch lists, extracts, or tests `.arc' archives. (An alternate
       extension sometimes used was `.ark'; these work too.) This is a very
       outdated file format which should certainly not be used for anything
       new, but you may still need an extraction utility, and here it is. :-)

       The default action is to extract all files in the specified archive;
       see OPTIONS below for how to do other things instead.


OPTIONS

       -h     give terse usage help.

       -l     list files in archive. If verbose listings are enabled, it shows
              the filename, compression method, compressed/uncompressed size,
              date/time, and CRC; but by default, it just shows the filename,
              uncompressed size, and date/time.

       -p     extract to standard output, rather than to separate files.

       -t     test files in archive (more precisely, check file CRCs).

       -U     use uppercase filenames; more precisely, preserve original case
              from archive.

       -v     give verbose output (when used with `-l').

       archive.arc
              the archive to operate on.

       match1 etc.
              optionally specify which archive members to list/extract/test.
              Those which match any of these filenames/wildcards are
              processed. Wildcard operators supported are shell-like `*' and
              `?', but don't forget to quote arguments which use these (e.g.
              `nomarch foo.arc '*.bar'').


EXTRACTING MULTIPLE ARCHIVES

       nomarch follows the `unzip'-like practice of working on only one
       archive per run, with further `filenames' given on the command-line
       actually specifying files to extract (or whatever). The easiest way to
       work on multiple files with nomarch is simply to run it multiple times
       using for; for example:

       for i in *.arc; do nomarch $i; done

       The above would extract all archives in the current directory.


USING THE PROGRAM FROM EMACS

       Emacs's arc-mode facility lets you work with various kinds of archive
       file directly from the editor. Making it use nomarch for extracting
       `.arc' files isn't too hard. Just add the following to your ~/.emacs
       file:

       (setq archive-arc-extract '("nomarch" "-U"))


BUGS

       The CRC used by the format is only 16-bit, so `-t' is a less-than-
       perfect test.

       One compression method, obsolete even by `.arc' standards :-), isn't
       supported yet. This is partly because I've yet to find a single file
       which uses it, despite testing an awful lot of files.

       Subdirectories in Spark archives are extracted as the `.arc'-format
       files they really are, which may not be terribly convenient.


SEE ALSO

       tar(1), gzip(1), bzip2(1), lbrate(1)


AUTHOR

       Russell Marks (rus@svgalib.org).

Version 1.4                     18th June, 2006                     nomarch(1)

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