Unix ar Archive
A Unix ar archive with three members — the simple format that backs static libraries (.a) and Debian packages (.deb). Hand-written to spec; for testing ar extractors and archive tooling.
- readme.txt
- notes.md
- data.csv
Specifications
- Format
- Unix ar (GNU short names)
- Members
- 3
- Note
- the format behind .a static libs and .deb
What is a .ar file?
The Unix ar archive (.ar/.a) is a simple concatenation format with a magic header and 60-byte member headers, used mainly for static libraries (libfoo.a) and Debian .deb packages. It stores files without compression.
How to use this file
Use an example .ar archive to test ar/static-library tooling, member extraction, and .deb/ar parsers.
How to use this file for testing
“Unix ar Archive” is a deterministic Novus Examples fixture for Conversion testing. The same content exported across many formats and linked as a group, so you can convert one and diff against the expected twin.
Documented properties for this file: Unix ar (GNU short names). Compare results against paired or grouped companions on this page when present (clean↔damaged, searchable↔scanned, or format twins) so scores stay reproducible across runs.
Download the file once, keep the path stable in CI or local scripts, and treat the spec table as the contract: dimensions, seeds, field lists, and roles are intentional. Corrupt or invalid samples are labelled as such — expect parsers to fail loudly rather than silently accept them.
Archive fixtures are documented down to their member list (shown on this page) and are deliberately safe — no zip bombs, executables, or hidden payloads. Test extractors against nested, unicode, empty, and encrypted variants.
Related files
- cpioCPIO Archive (newc/SVR4)A cpio archive in the newc (SVR4) format with four members — the Unix archive format used by initramfs and RPM. Hand-written to spec and documented down to its member list; for testing cpio extractors and converters.
- 7z7z - LZMA2 ArchiveA 7-Zip archive using LZMA2 compression, containing a small documented file tree. For testing 7z extraction and conversion.
- 7z7z - Password ProtectedA password-protected 7z archive (AES-256, encrypted header). The password is “novus-example” — printed here on purpose so you can test encrypted-archive extraction. Contains only harmless sample text.
- arAR - Empty Archive (magic only)The smallest valid archive in this catalog: the 8-byte ar magic and nothing after it. ar has no trailer record, so end-of-file is the only end marker, and this is what an empty static library or an empty .deb control archive looks like on disk.
- bz2BZ2 - Bzip2 Single FileA single text file compressed with bzip2 — the container-free codec on its own, for testing decompression and codec detection.
- jsonConvert v2 Archive Member ManifestJSON ground-truth manifest for the canonical compressed-TAR twins, publishing each safe path, byte count, and full SHA-256 digest. Stable P8 artifact p8-convert-archive-member-manifest.
Generated by generation/archives_extra.py. Free for any use, no attribution required — license.