Short: GNU utility to copy to/from archives. V2.4.2 Author: phil@cs.wwu.edu (Phil Nelson) Type: dev/ade Version: 2.4.2 Requires: The binary requires ixemul.library. Architecture: m68k-amigaos Origin: Amiga Development Environment, ftp.ninemoons.com:pub/ade Cpio copies files into or out of a cpio or tar archive, which is a file that contains other files plus information about them, such as their pathname, owner, timestamps, and access permissions. The archive can be another file on the disk, a magnetic tape, or a pipe. Cpio has three operating modes. In copy-out mode, cpio copies files into an archive. It reads a list of filenames, one per line, on the standard input, and writes the archive onto the standard output. A typical way to generate the list of filenames is with the find command; you should give find the -depth option to minimize problems with permissions on directories that are unwritable or not searchable. In copy-in mode, cpio copies files out of an archive or lists the archive contents. It reads the archive from the standard input. Any non-option command line arguments are shell globbing patterns; only files in the archive whose names match one or more of those patterns are copied from the archive. Unlike in the shell, an initial `.' in a filename does match a wildcard at the start of a pattern, and a `/' in a filename can match wildcards. If no patterns are given, all files are extracted. In copy-pass mode, cpio copies files from one directory tree to another, combining the copy-out and copy-in steps without actually using an archive. It reads the list of files to copy from the standard input; the directory into which it will copy them is given as a non-option argument. Cpio supports the following archive formats: binary, old ASCII, new ASCII, crc, HPUX binary, HPUX old ASCII, old tar, and POSIX.1 tar. The binary format is obsolete because it encodes information about the files in a way that is not portable between different machine architectures. The old ASCII format is portable between different machine architectures, but should not be used on file systems with more than 65536 i-nodes. The new ASCII format is portable between different machine architectures and can be used on any size file system, but is not supported by all versions of cpio; currently, it is only supported by GNU and Unix System V R4. The crc format is like the new ASCII format, but also contains a checksum for each file which cpio calculates when creating an archive and verifies when the file is extracted from the archive. The HPUX formats are provided for compatibility with HPUX's cpio which stores device files differently. The tar format is provided for compatability with the tar program. It can not be used to archive files with names longer than 100 characters, and can not be used to archive "special" (block or character devices) files. The POSIX.1 tar format can not be used to archive files with names longer than 255 characters (less unless they have a "/" in just the right place). By default, cpio creates binary format archives, for compatibility with older cpio programs. When extracting from archives, cpio automatically recognizes which kind of archive it is reading and can read archives created on machines with a different byte-order. Some of the options to cpio apply only to certain operating modes; see the SYNOPSIS section for a list of which options are allowed in which modes.