Commands

Commands

General syntax:

parc <command> <archive.parc> [files/patterns...] [options]
parc help [command]
parc --version

parc without arguments shows a short help summary; parc help prints the full option reference and parc help <command> explains one command. --version (or -V) prints only the version.

command	action
l	list contents (names, sizes, dates, CRC)
lb	list internal blocks: method, sizes, positions
t	test by decompressing and comparing CRCs, without writing
x	extract keeping stored paths
e	extract without paths (everything into the destination directory)
a	add and replace; creates the archive if it does not exist
u	add and replace only if the file on disk is newer; creates if missing
f	freshen: update only files already in the archive if the disk copy is newer
d	delete the given names/patterns from the archive
r	repair using the recovery record; writes fixed.<name>

Examples

# create and verify
parc a backup.parc documents photos -m5 -rr3%
parc t backup.parc

# list and filter
parc l backup.parc
parc l backup.parc "*.txt"

# extract with and without paths
parc x backup.parc -dp/srv/out
parc e backup.parc -dp/srv/out

# update and delete
parc u backup.parc documents
parc f backup.parc documents
parc d backup.parc "*.tmp"

# repair a damaged archive
parc r backup.parc

stdin/stdout

• parc a out.parc -siname.txt - adds data from stdin.
• parc x archive.parc data.txt -so writes the extracted file to stdout.
• parc a - files... writes the .parc archive to stdout.
• parc l -, parc t -, parc x - read the archive from stdin (an internal temporary file is used because the footer is at the end).

Exit codes

code	meaning
0	success
1	usage error: unknown option, missing arguments, locked archive, or missing archive in f/d
2	corrupt data (CRC/structure); with r, unrecoverable sectors
3	method PArc cannot compress or decompress
4	I/O error (could not open/create a file)
5	missing or wrong password
6	finished, but some files could not be read and were not added
130	cancelled with Ctrl-C