ar370 Archive Utility

Introduction

The ar370 archive utility is used to maintain groups of files that are combined into a single archive file. Normally, the ar370 archive utility is used to generate an archive containing object files used by cool to resolve external references.

An ar370 archive is organized as a collection of members, identified by a member name that resembles a filename. The member names serve only to identify the members to the ar370 utility. Otherwise, member names are not significant. For each object file contained in an ar370 archive, the ar370 utility records the names of external symbols defined or referenced in the member (including external objects with extended names). This allows cool to find the member that defines a particular symbol. No connection is required between an ar370 member name and the external symbol names defined by the member.

Physically, each ar370 archive is composed of three parts.

ar370 Components
Component Contents

header information such as the date of the last modification and the release number of the ar370 utility that made the modification.

member archive a copy of each file added to the library. (For ar370 archives, unlike the files in a UNIX directory, the order of members may be significant.)

symbol table a list of each external symbol defined or referred to by any member of the archive.

*ar370* Components
Component	Contents
header	information such as the date of the last modification and the release number of the `ar370` utility that made the modification.
member archive	a copy of each file added to the library. (For `ar370` archives, unlike the files in a UNIX directory, the order of members may be significant.)
symbol table	a list of each external symbol defined or referred to by any member of the archive.

When adding or replacing members, the ar370 utility inserts a copy of each input file into the member archive. The utility also searches the external symbol dictionary (ESD) of each input file, creates a sorted list of ESD entries, and inserts the list in the library symbol table. The library symbol table is used by cool to search an archive efficiently for ESD symbols and extended names.

CAUTION:: ar370 archives are created and maintained only by ar370 .
The internal structures and the data they contain are in EBCDIC. ar370 archives should never be modified or accessed in any way, other than through ar370 .

Note: The SAS/C Cross-Platform Compiler includes two utilities that are useful for working with ar370 archives: ar2updte and updte2ar . For details, see ar2updte and updte2ar Utilities. [cautionend]

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