User's Manual ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ RAR 6.10 console version ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Welcome to the RAR Archiver! -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Introduction ~~~~~~~~~~~~ RAR is a console application allowing to manage archive files in command line mode. RAR provides compression, encryption, data recovery and many other functions described in this manual. RAR supports only RAR format archives, which have .rar file name extension by default. ZIP and other formats are not supported. Even if you specify .zip extension when creating an archive, it will still be in RAR format. Windows users may install WinRAR, which supports more archive types including RAR and ZIP formats. WinRAR provides both graphical user interface and command line mode. While console RAR and GUI WinRAR have the similar command line syntax, some differences exist. So it is recommended to use this rar.txt manual for console RAR (rar.exe in case of Windows version) and winrar.chm WinRAR help file for GUI WinRAR (winrar.exe). Configuration file ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ RAR and UnRAR for Unix read configuration information from .rarrc file in a user's home directory (stored in HOME environment variable) or in /etc directory. RAR and UnRAR for Windows read configuration information from rar.ini file, placed in the same directory as the rar.exe file. This file can contain the following string: switches=<any RAR switches separated by spaces> For example: switches=-m5 -s It is also possible to specify separate switch sets for individual RAR commands using the following syntax: switches_<command>=<any RAR switches separated by spaces> For example: switches_a=-m5 -s switches_x=-o+ Environment variable ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Default parameters may be added to the RAR command line by establishing an environment variable "RAR". For instance, in Unix following lines may be added to your profile: RAR='-s -md1024' export RAR RAR will use this string as default parameters in the command line and will create "solid" archives with 1024 MB sliding dictionary size. RAR handles options with priority as following: command line switches highest priority switches in the RAR variable lower priority switches saved in configuration file lowest priority Log file ~~~~~~~~ If switch -ilog is specified in the command line or configuration file, RAR will write informational messages about errors encountered while processing archives into a log file. Read the switch -ilog description for more details. The file order list for solid archiving - rarfiles.lst ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ rarfiles.lst contains a user-defined file list, which tells RAR the order in which to add files to a solid archive. It may contain file names, wildcards and special entry - $default. The default entry defines the place in order list for files not matched with other entries in this file. The comment character is ';'. In Windows this file should be placed in the same directory as RAR or in %APPDATA%\WinRAR directory, in Unix - to the user's home directory or in /etc. Tips to provide improved compression and speed of operation: - similar files should be grouped together in the archive; - frequently accessed files should be placed at the beginning. Normally masks placed nearer to the top of list have a higher priority, but there is an exception from this rule. If rarfiles.lst contains such two masks that all files matched by one mask are also matched by another, that mask which matches a smaller subset of file names will have higher priority regardless of its position in the list. For example, if you have *.cpp and f*.cpp masks, f*.cpp has a higher priority, so the position of 'filename.cpp' will be chosen according to 'f*.cpp', not '*.cpp'. RAR command line syntax ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Syntax RAR <command> [ -<switches> ] <archive> [ <@listfiles...> ] [ <files...> ] [ <path_to_extract\> ] Description Command is a single character or string specifying an action to be performed by RAR. Switches are designed to modify the way RAR performs such action. Other parameters are archive name and files to be archived or extracted. Listfiles are plain text files containing names of files to process. File names must start at the first column. It is possible to put comments to the listfile after // characters. For example, you can create backup.lst containing the following strings: c:\work\doc\*.txt //backup text documents c:\work\image\*.bmp //backup pictures c:\work\misc and then run: rar a backup @backup.lst If you wish to read file names from stdin (standard input), specify the empty listfile name (just @). By default, console RAR uses the single byte encoding in list files, but it can be redefined with -sc<charset>l switch. You can specify both usual file names and list files in the same command line. If neither files nor listfiles are specified, then *.* is implied and RAR will process all files. path_to_extract includes the destination directory name followed by a path separator character. For example, it can be c:\dest\ in Windows or data/ in Unix. It specifies the directory to place extracted files in 'x' and 'e' commands. This directory is created by RAR if it does not exist yet. Alternatively it can be set with -op<path> switch. Many RAR commands, such as extraction, test or list, allow to use wildcards in archive name. If no extension is specified in archive mask, RAR assumes .rar, so * means all archives with .rar extension. If you need to process all archives without extension, use *. mask. *.* mask selects all files. Wildcards in archive name are not allowed when archiving and deleting. In Unix you need to enclose RAR command line parameters containing wildcards in single or double quotes to prevent their expansion by Unix shell. For example, this command will extract *.asm files from all *.rar archives in current directory: rar e '*.rar' '*.asm' Command could be any of the following: a Add files to archive. Examples: 1) add all *.hlp files from the current directory to the archive help.rar: rar a help *.hlp 2) archive all files from the current directory and subdirectories to 362000 bytes size solid, self-extracting volumes and add the recovery record to each volume: rar a -r -v362 -s -sfx -rr save Because no file names are specified, all files (*) are assumed. 3) as a special exception, if directory name is specified as an argument and if directory name does not include file masks and trailing path separator, the entire contents of the directory and all subdirectories will be added to the archive even if switch -r is not specified. The following command will add all files from the directory Bitmaps and its subdirectories to the RAR archive Pictures.rar: rar a Pictures.rar Bitmaps 4) if directory name includes the trailing path separator, normal rules apply and you need to specify switch -r to process its subdirectories. The following command will add all files from directory Bitmaps, but not from its subdirectories, because switch -r is not specified: rar a Pictures.rar Bitmaps\* c Add archive comment. Comments are displayed while the archive is being processed. Comment length is limited to 256 KB. Examples: rar c distrib.rar Also comments may be added from a file using -z[file] switch. The following command adds a comment from info.txt file: rar c -zinfo.txt dummy ch Change archive parameters. This command can be used with most of archive modification switches to modify archive parameters. It is especially convenient for switches like -cl, -cu, -tl, which do not have a dedicated command. It is not able to recompress, encrypt or decrypt archive data and it cannot merge or create volumes. If used without any switches, 'ch' command just copies the archive data without modification. Example: Set archive time to latest file: rar ch -tl files.rar cw Write archive comment to specified file. Format of output file depends on -sc switch. If output file name is not specified, comment data will be sent to stdout. Examples: 1) rar cw arc comment.txt 2) rar cw -scuc arc unicode.txt 3) rar cw arc d Delete files from archive. If this command removes all files from archive, the empty archive is removed. e Extract ...
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