---
name: "nomarch"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "nomarch"
version: "1.4-5.1"
release: "Debian 13 (Trixie)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/nomarch"
---

# nomarch(1)

extract \`.arc' archives

## NAME

nomarch - extract \`.arc' archives

## SYNOPSIS

**nomarch** \[*-hlptUv*\] \[**archive.arc**\] \[**match1** \[**match2** ... \]\]

## DESCRIPTION

nomarch lists, extracts, or tests \`.arc' archives. (An alternate extension sometimes used was \`.ark'; these work too.) This is a *very* outdated file format which should certainly not be used for anything new, but you may still need an extraction utility, and here it is. :-)

The default action is to extract all files in the specified archive; see **OPTIONS** below for how to do other things instead.

## OPTIONS

- *-h*

  give terse usage help.

- *-l*

  list files in archive. If verbose listings are enabled, it shows the filename, compression method, compressed/uncompressed size, date/time, and CRC; but by default, it just shows the filename, uncompressed size, and date/time.

- *-p*

  extract to standard output, rather than to separate files.

- *-t*

  test files in archive (more precisely, check file CRCs).

- *-U*

  use uppercase filenames; more precisely, preserve original case from archive.

- *-v*

  give verbose output (when used with \`*-l*').

- **archive.arc**

  the archive to operate on.

- **match1** etc.

  optionally specify which archive members to list/extract/test. Those which match any of these filenames/wildcards are processed. Wildcard operators supported are shell-like \`\*' and \`?', but don't forget to quote arguments which use these (e.g. \`*nomarch* *foo.arc '\*.bar'*').

## EXTRACTING MULTIPLE ARCHIVES

nomarch follows the \`unzip'-like practice of working on only one archive per run, with further \`filenames' given on the command-line actually specifying files to extract (or whatever). The easiest way to work on multiple files with nomarch is simply to run it multiple times using *for*; for example:

for i in \*.arc; do nomarch $i; done

The above would extract all archives in the current directory.

## USING THE PROGRAM FROM EMACS

Emacs's arc-mode facility lets you work with various kinds of archive file directly from the editor. Making it use nomarch for extracting \`.arc' files isn't too hard. Just add the following to your *~/.emacs* file:

(setq archive-arc-extract '("nomarch" "-U"))

## BUGS

The CRC used by the format is only 16-bit, so \`*-t*' is a less-than-perfect test.

One compression method, obsolete even by \`.arc' standards :-), isn't supported yet. This is partly because I've yet to find a single file which uses it, despite testing an awful lot of files.

Subdirectories in Spark archives are extracted as the \`.arc'-format files they really are, which may not be terribly convenient.

## SEE ALSO

[*tar*(1)](/tar/1.md), [*gzip*(1)](/gzip/1.md), [*bzip2*(1)](/bzip2/1.md), *lbrate*(1)

## AUTHOR

Russell Marks (rus@svgalib.org).