poka.sh

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AR

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Unix ar Archive Preview.

At a glance
Purpose A Unix ar archive: the container of static libraries (.a) and Debian packages, with GNU or BSD long names.
Extensions .ar
Poka parser poka-ar
Viewer poka-table-viewer
Depth tier Parser with a shared viewer (see Depth tiers)
Breadth tier B4 Summary (see Breadth tiers)

How much Poka reads

B4 Summary. The container and metadata are read and summarised (counts, properties, structure), but the main content is not rendered.

Confidence: medium (the reviewer read the code). Basis: Reviewed 2026-10-26: read parsers/poka-ar/src/main.rs (485 lines) and plugin.json. The eleven unit tests cover the member walk, a member running past the end, and crafted string-table offsets, truncated tables and oversized sizes, none of which may panic (#535); the corpus has no .ar sample. Covers .ar and .a-archive. The table lists every member with name (GNU string-table and BSD #1/ long names resolved), kind (member, symbol index, string table), size, mode, UID and GID and the raw modification time. Judgement: B4: the archive is listed but no member is extracted or shown.

What Poka does not read

  • Member contents are not extracted or shown, so object files in a static library are not read
  • The symbol index is listed as a member but its symbols are not decoded
  • Modification times are shown as raw seconds
  • Only the first 5,000 members are listed

Libraries

Libraries Poka uses or has assessed for this format, with the status, licence and language the registry records.

Sources

  • parsers/poka-ar/src/main.rs
  • parsers/poka-ar/plugin.json