Re: [pups] extract old archive format?

Bob Eager: The 'ar' format of that vintage is trivial, and documentation easily found. I wrote programs to read it back in 1976! ====== That's nothing. Either Ken or Dennis wrote such a program years before that! Warren even has a binary somewhere to prove it! Seriously, it's a binary format, so I don't know that it would be easy to process in awk. (At least not in awk-classic; stuff that works only in ghootandwaveawk is not all that interesting to me.) But the format is simple, and any language new or old that can handle binary data without tears should do. If I didn't have an overfull plate already (and a visit to the Auto-Electrocution Consultant tomorrow, and one to the Canal Rooting Clinic Monday--proving that one should follow Father's advice and Stay Away collect the different specifications for ar headers over the years, and write a small suite of programs to read them. Perhaps in Python, just to be difficult. (Why isn't there a language called Goon, Warren?) Norman Wilson Toronto ON (owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww)