Provided by: lhasa_0.4.0-1_amd64 bug

NAME

       lha - compression tool for .lzh archive files.

SYNOPSIS

       lha [-]{lvtxep[q{num}][finv]}[w=<dir>] archive_file [file ...]

DESCRIPTION

       lha  is  a  tool  for extracting .lzh archive files. It also supports variants of the .lzh
       archive, such as .lzs and .pma.

       This version of the lha tool is part of Lhasa, a free implementation of the .lzh format.

COMMAND SYNTAX

       The lha tool has an unusual command syntax, compared to  most  other  Unix  commands.  The
       first  parameter  to  the  program  specifies  the  command  to perform and all additional
       options. The second parameter specifies the path  to  the  archive  file  to  operate  on.
       Following  this  is  a  list  of  wildcard  patterns to match against the filenames of the
       archived files.

       The first character of the command parameter specifies the command to  perform,  which  is
       one of the following:

       -l     List contents of the specified archive.

       -v     Verbosely list contents of the specified archive.

       -t     Test  the integrity of the specified archive: decompress its contents and check the
              CRC.

       -e or -x
              Extract archive. Files are extracted to the current working  directory  unless  the
              'w' option is specified.

       -p     Extract  archive,  sending decompressed files to stdout rather than writing them to
              the filesystem as actual files. This is  useful  when  used  as  part  of  a  shell
              pipeline.

OPTIONS

       The remainder of the command parameter is used to specify additional options:

       q[012] Quiet mode. Higher numbers suppress more output. Level 0 is normal operation. If no
              number is specified, full suppression (level 2) is  used.  The  quiet  option  also
              turns on the force overwrite option ('f').

       f      Force overwrite of existing files: do not prompt.

       i      Ignore  paths  of archived files: extract all archived files to the same directory,
              ignoring subdirectories.

       n      Do not perform any actual operations: instead, perform a dry run of  the  requested
              operation and describe what would have been done on standard output.

       v      Verbose mode: causes extra information to be written to standard output.

       w=dir  Specify destination directory for extracting files. This must be the last option of
              the first parameter.

COMPRESSION FORMATS

       The following gives some basic description of the various different supported  compression
       formats  (as  listed  when  using  the  list  command  documented above).  All formats are
       variants on the LZSS compression algorithm.

       -lz4-  Uncompressed (stored) data, as used by the original LArc tool. This is not  related
              to the LZ4 compression algorithm of the same name.

       -lz5-, -lzs-
              Compression  formats  introduced  with  the  original LArc tool.  -lzs- uses a 2KiB
              sliding window while -lz5- uses a 4KiB window.

       -lhd-  Directory entry. No data is stored, only headers.

       -lh0-  Uncompressed (stored) data, as used in LHarc and LHa.

       -lh1-  Compression algorithm introduced with LHarc. This uses a 4KiB sliding  window  with
              dynamic Huffman encoding.

       -lh4-, -lh5-, -lh6-, -lh7-
              New  algorithm  introduced  with LHa (aka LHarc v2.0). The original versions (-lh4-
              and -lh5-) used 8KiB and 16KiB sliding window sizes, respectively.  Later  versions
              introduced new variants with larger window sizes: -lh6- (64KiB) and -lh7- (128KiB).

       -lhx-  Variant on the -lh4- format listed above introduced by UNLHA32.dll that extends the
              window size to 1MiB.

       -lk7-  Variant on the -lh4- format listed above that was introduced by the LHark  tool  (a
              fork  of  LHa).  This  is  actually named -lh7- within the archive files, but Lhasa
              renames it internally to avoid clashing with the other algorithm of the same  name.
              Uses a 128KiB sliding window, with some minor improvement to the algorithm.

       -pm0-  Uncompressed (stored) data, as used by the PMarc tool.

       -pm1-  Algorithm used by version 1 of the PMarc tool.

       -pm2-  Algorithm used by version 2 of the PMarc tool.

UNSUPPORTED FORMATS

       The  following  formats  are not currently supported by Lhasa (but possibly will be in the
       future):

       -lh2-, -lh3-
              These formats can be decompressed by LHa v2.0  but  the  tool  could  not  actually
              generate  archives  with  these formats; they appear to have only been supported in
              beta versions before the v2.0 release. As a result, few if any  examples  exist  in
              the wild.

       -lh8-, -lh9-, -lha-, -lhb-, -lhc-, -lhe-
              Extensions of the -lh4- format to even larger window sizes.

       -pc1-  Format generated by the PopCom! compression utility for CP/M.

       If you encounter examples of these in the wild, please get in touch.

EXAMPLES

       Here are some examples for how to invoke the program:

       lha -v foobar.lzs
              List the contents of the file foobar.lzs (producing verbose output).

       lha -xf foobar.exe
              Extract  the  contents  of  a  self-extracting archive file named foobar.exe to the
              current directory, overwriting existing files with the same names if they exist.

       lha -xqw=/tmp foobar.lzh
              Extract the contents of foobar.lzh to /tmp, overwriting any  existing  files  found
              there, and suppressing normal output (similar to how other Unix tools such as cp(1)
              or tar(1) act silently by default).

SEE ALSO

       unzip(1), tar(1), gzip(1), bzip2(1), xz(1), lzip(1)

HISTORY

       The .lzh format originated with Kazuhiko Miki's MS-DOS archive tool, LArc, using the  LZSS
       algorithm  developed  by  Haruhiko Okumura, and the .lzs filename extension. The container
       format was reused for LHarc, by Haruyasu Yoshizaki (Yoshi), which  used  a  new  algorithm
       named  LZHUF  and  the  .lzh  extension.  In  later versions, LHarc was renamed to LHA and
       extended with more effective compression algorithms.

       Versions of the LHA tool  were  later  ported  to  various  different  operating  systems,
       including  the  Amiga, Atari, MacOS, OS/2 and Unix.  A tool for MSX-DOS named PMarc reused
       the container format with a new compression algorithm (.pma extension).

       The Unix version of the tool was developed by Masaru Oki,  Nobutaka  Watazaki  and  Tsugio
       Okamoto,  but  was  released  under  a  software license that does not conform to the Free
       Software or Open Source Definitions. Lhasa was developed as a drop-in replacement that  is
       Free Software and Open Source.

BUGS

       The current version does not allow the creation of new archive files.

       Some  obscure  compression  algorithms  are  not  currently supported (see the UNSUPPORTED
       FORMATS section above).

       The tool does not currently do text format conversion for non-ASCII filenames when listing
       the contents of archives. Non-ASCII characters are replaced by a question mark.

AUTHOR

       Lhasa was written and is maintained by Simon Howard.

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright © 2011, 2012 Simon Howard.

       Permission  to  use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any purpose with or
       without fee is  hereby  granted,  provided  that  the  above  copyright  notice  and  this
       permission notice appear in all copies.

       THE  SOFTWARE  IS  PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO
       THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT
       SHALL  THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR
       ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN  AN  ACTION
       OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE
       USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.

                                                                                           lha(1)