This is fpack.man in view mode; [Download] [Up]
FPACK(1) UNIX User's Manual November 2, 1987
NAME
fpack - pack and unpack ascii files with simple archiving scheme
USAGE
fpack [-fv] [files]
DESCRIPTION
_f_p_a_c_k is a simple plain-text-file archiving scheme to either reduce
the number of files or to package them together. It is designed to be
portable to systems between which files may be transferred, such as
between UNIX and MSDOS. It can save space on systems that use disk
blocks for files that occupy a small part of a block. One of the
program's requirements is that it does not alter the format of its
input, so files like documents or human readable data files are not
converted to a special format. This allows unpacking by hand in an
emergency (e.g., the recipient of an archive does not have _f_p_a_c_k to
unpack).
Files are delimited by a special string at the start of a line:
fpack:!@#$%^&*(): <filename>
OPTIONS
-f Forceful action. _f_p_a_c_k will overwrite existing files it is
unpacking and continue when it can't open files.
-v Verbose output. _f_p_a_c_k will name the files it packs or unpacks.
NOTES
Text outside file delimiters in an archive will be ignored. So, files
packed and sent through mailers that add header lines and trailing
signatures will be unpacked safely.
If a file does not end with a newline character, one will be silently
added.
If a file to be unpacked exists, then it will not be overwritten.
Instead, the packed contents for the file(s) being unpacked will be
ignored.
EXAMPLES
Pack up some C source files.
fpack *.c > archive
Unpack all files.
fpack < archive
These are the contents of the former NiCE NeXT User Group NeXTSTEP/OpenStep software archive, currently hosted by Netfuture.ch.