FVCBM(1)

NAME
fvcbm - list directories of Commodore 64/128 compatible archive files

SYNOPSIS
fvcbm [ -h ] [ -d ] filename1 [ filename2, ...filenameN ]

DESCRIPTION
fvcbm displays the directories of Commodore 64 and 128 archive and self-dissolving archive files, as well as raw floppy disk images. It can be used to determine what is contained in an archive and how much disk space it will take when uncompressed. It is especially useful for previewing files on a network-connected machine used for downloading Commodore software, and for viewing disk images outside a Commodore 64 emulator.

If a given file cannot be found, several standard archive file extensions are appended to the name in an attempt to find the desired file. If a file named `-' is given, fvcbm will attempt to read the standard input for an archive's contents. Under Linux, fvcbm can read 1581 disks by specifying the floppy disk device (e.g. /dev/fd0). The command setfdprm must first be used to specify that the drive contains a 1581 disk, which requires a kernel version >= 1.3 (patches to earlier kernels are available).

The default (wide) directory display contains a line for each file in the archive. Each entry's display includes the file name, file type, uncompressed length in bytes, uncompressed length in Commodore 254 byte disk blocks, compression method used, compression savings factor (as a percentage reduction of the uncompressed file), and checksum.

Most columns are totalled in the last line. Values displayed are the number of files in the archive, total number of data bytes in the archive, number of disk blocks required to hold all the files in the archive (not including archive overhead), the archive type and version number (if known), overall compression savings factor (not including the extraction program for self-extracting files), and the number of disk blocks of compressed data in the archive. For self-extracting archives, a `+' and the number of disk blocks taken up by the extraction program are displayed following the number of blocks of data. Adding the numbers before and after the plus should roughly equal the size of the archive file on disk (because of padding and rounding, the actual size on disk may be slightly different).

The -d option selects a style of directory output which is similar to that produced by Commodore disk drives. Only the file name, size in blocks and type are displayed for each entry in the archive. The summary line totals the number of blocks used by the entries.

fvcbm supports the following archive types: ARC230 (not to be confused with SEA ARC), self-extracting ARC230 (SDA), Lynx, CS-DOS (LZH), self-extracting CS-DOS (SFX), LBR (not to be confused with LBR for CP/M), 64Net files (N64), PC64 emulator files (R/S/U/P00), emulator tape images (T64) and emulator disk images (D64 and X64), including 1541 and 1581 disk types.

OPTIONS

-h  Print a help message.

-d  Display directory in Commodore disk directory format.

EXIT STATUS
fvcbm returns the following exit status:

0   if no errors were encountered

1   if fvcbm displayed the help message and exited

2   if a file could not be found, or a read error occurred

3   if the file type was not supported

If more than one filename caused an error, the status will reflect the last error encountered.

AUTHOR
Daniel Fandrich <dan@fch.wimsey.bc.ca>

fvcbm was inspired by Vernon D. Buerg's program fv for displaying directories of MS-DOS archives.

Thanks to Guntram Blohm, Kevin Brisley, Teemu Rantanen and Haruyasu Yoshizaki for their reference source code and/or documentation for various archive formats. Thanks also to Jouko Valta for beta testing.

Feel free to contact the author if you have questions or suggestions for improvement of the program.

BUGS
Reading an archive from the standard input does not work for some archive types in some environments; when it does work, the file lengths can be incorrect for Lynx and PC64 files. Newer versions of some archivers may create files which are not recognized by fvcbm (please contact the author if you find one). Archive volume labels and `locked' file status for D64 and X64 archive types are not displayed.

Occasionally, some archive types (especially D64 and ARC) are misidentified. Convert D64 archives to X64 type archives with c1541 (part of x64) to read them.

Older versions of Lynx (at least versions IX and below) do not explicitly store the length of the final file in the archive. This last file can therefore be improperly lengthened if it is transferred using a file transfer protocol like XMODEM which adds extraneous characters to the end of transferred files. fvcbm (and Lynx itself) has no way of determining if this has happened, and will display the incorrect file length if this is the case. This limitation can also affect PC64 files.

COPYRIGHT
fvcbm is copyright © 1995-1996 by Daniel Fandrich. It is provided “as is”, without any express or implied warranties. See the file COPYING, which should have been included with the program, for details.

The words Commodore, Commodore 64 and CBM are registered trademarks of Escom AG.

SEE ALSO
cbmfs(4), lha(1), lscbm(1), setfdprm(8), x64(1)