AR(5) BSD File Formats Manual AR(5)NAMEar — 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 con‐
tents 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 follow‐
ing the archive header.
Any unused characters in any of these fields are written as space charac‐
ters. 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.
SEE ALSOar(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 rea‐
sons, as described above. This format first appeared in 4.4BSD.
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.
BUGS
The <ar.h> header file, and the ar manual page, do not currently describe
the ELF archive format.
BSD June 1, 1994 BSD
