expack(1) manipulate Flex files

SYNOPSIS

expack -a FLEXFILE FILE...

expack -c FLEXFILE FILE...

expack -x FLEXFILE [INDEX]

expack -i MANIFEST

expack -l FLEXFILE

DESCRIPTION

expack is a command-line utility that lets you extract and create Flex files. Flex files are archives (which means that they act as containers for other files, somewhat like directories) used by Ultima 7 to store most of its data. Note that the names of the original files are not stored in the Flex --- files are only retrievable by their index.

Modes of operation

-a Add
--NOT IMPLEMENTED YET. FUTURE ENHANCEMENT-- This command adds one or more FILEs to the end of FLEXFILE.

-c Create
This command takes one or more FILEs and bundles them into FLEXFILE, overwriting it in the process.

-x Extract
Lets you extract the files contained within FLEXFILE. If INDEX is given only the file at this position will be unpacked, otherwise all files are extracted. The created files will be named index.u7o.

-i Input
Similar to "Create", this command creates FLEXFILE from a number of input files. However, "Input" takes the names of the input files from MANIFEST instead of the command line.

MANIFEST must be a list of file names, one per line. The first name is that of the Flex file that is to be created, the rest are the input files used in building it.

-l List
This command lists the contents of a FLEXFILE. It gives you the number of files contained within the Flex file, as well as the length of each file.

EXAMPLES

expack -a animals.flx bee.wav
Adds bee.wav to the Flex file animals.flx.

expack -a animals.flx hamster.wav snake.wav donkey.wav
Adds hamster.wav, snake.wav, and donkey.wav to the Flex file animals.flx.

expack -c animals.flx duck.wav cat.wav cow.wav dog.wav
Creates a new Flex file animals.flx containing duck.wav, cat.wav, cow.wav, and dog.wav.

expack -x text.flx 17
Extracts the file at position 17fromtext.flxinto17.u7o.

expack -x text.flx
Extracts all files from text.flx into files named 0.u7o, 1.u7o, 2.u7o, etc.

expack -i wavlist
With wavlist reading:

jmsfx.flx
ant.wav
bee.wav
cat.wav

will create a new Flex file jmsfx.flx consisting of ant.wav, bee.wav, andcat.wav.

expack -l text.flx
Lists the number and lenghts of files contained in text.flx.

BUGS

The "Add" command (-a) does not work yet.

AUTHOR

This manpage was written by Robert Bihlmeyer based on a text by Marc Winterrowd. It may be freely redistributed and modified under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 or higher.