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 exten
       sion sometimes used was .ark; these work too.) This is  a  very	out
       dated  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  pro
	      cessed. Wildcard operators supported are shell-like * and ?,
	      but dont 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
       Emacss  arc-mode  facility lets you work with various kinds of archive
       file directly from the editor. Though it defaults to using the old non-
       free  arc  program  at the time of writing, making it use nomarch for
       extracting .arc files isnt 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-per
       fect test.

       One compression method, obsolete even by .arc  standards  :-),  isnt
       supported  yet.	This  is partly because Ive 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 1.3		       8th August, 2002 		    nomarch(1)