CABEXTRACT(1)

okay bestie, this is CABEXTRACT(1) from the General Commands Manual — and we're about to make .cab files make sense. no cap. 💅

🎀 NAME 🎀

cabextract — the program that extracts files from Microsoft cabinet (.cab) archives. literally its whole job, and it ate.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

cabextract [-ddir] [-eencoding] [-f] [-Fpattern] [-h] [-i] [-k] [-l]
[-L] [-n] [-p] [-q] [-s] [-t] [-v]  cabinet files ...

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

cabextract un-archives files in the Microsoft cabinet file format (.cab), or any binary file that contains an embedded cabinet file (frequently found in .exe files). it's giving archive goblin, but make it useful. 🫶

It extracts all files from all cabinet files you put on the command line. every single one, bestie.

For a multi-part cabinet made of several files, you only need to give the first cabinet file as an argument to cabextract, because it will automatically look for the remaining files. iconic. but if you wanna prevent cabextract from extracting cabinet files you did not specify, use the -s option. periodt.

💖 OPTIONS 💖

okay here's the little summary of options, bestie — every flag, no skips:

• -d dir — extracts all files into the directory dir.
• -e encoding — specifies the character encoding of filenames inside the cabinet files. you only need this if you find cabinet files with garbled filenames; most software creates CAB files with either ASCII or UTF8 filenames. the list of supported encodings is given by the command iconv -l.
• -f — corrupted cabinet files will be 'fixed' to salvage whatever is possible from them. file entries with bad folders or names will be skipped rather than rejecting the entire cabinet file. impossible file lengths will be truncated to extract as much as possible, including when you're missing later files in a cabinet set. corrupted MSZIP blocks and failed block checksums will be ignored. warnings will be printed if any of these conditions are met.
• -F pattern — only files with names that match the shell pattern pattern shall be listed, tested or extracted. on non-GNU systems, this match may be case-sensitive. use the option repeatedly to supply more than one pattern. files will be listed, tested or extracted if they match any pattern. slay.
• -h — prints a page of help and exits. bye 👋
• -i — prompts before overwriting files. consent for file overwrites, we love to see it.
• -k — don't overwrite symlinks when extracting files.
• -l — lists the contents of the given cabinet files, rather than extracting them. no unpacking, just names and vibes.
• -L — when extracting cabinet files, makes each extracted file's name lowercase. tiny letters, big energy.
• -n — never overwrite existing files. absolutely not. 🙅‍♀️
• -p — files shall be extracted to standard output.
• -q — when extracting cabinet files, suppresses all messages except errors and warnings. quiet mode: only the important chaos gets through.
• -s — when testing, listing or extracting cabinets which span multiple files, only cabinet files given on the command line shall be used. no surprise extras, bestie.
• -t — tests the integrity of the cabinet. files are decompressed, but not written to disk or standard output. if the file successfully decompresses, the MD5 checksum of the file is printed. integrity check with receipts. 🔥
• -v — if given alone on the command line, prints the version of cabextract and exits. given with a list of cabinet files, it will list the contents of the cabinet files. dual-purpose queen.

👑 AUTHOR 👑

this manual page was written by Stuart Caie <kyzer@cabextract.org.uk>, based on the one written by Eric Sharkey <sharkey@debian.org>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system. legends only. 🫶

mwah 💋 that's the whole page — date on this one is March 7, 2018, and the manual name is CABEXTRACT(1). bye bestie, go extract something cute. 🎀✨