Quick reference for the CLI. Mostly so I don’t forget the flags.

Compression

# Compress file
./packrat -c input.txt output.prt
./packrat -c input.txt  # auto-names to input.txt.prt

# Decompress
./packrat -d file.prt output.txt
./packrat -d input.txt.prt  # auto-names to input.txt

Archives

# Create archive
./packrat -a archive.prt directory/

# Create solid archive (better compression)
./packrat -a --solid archive.prt directory/

# Extract
./packrat -x archive.prt destination/

# List contents
./packrat -l archive.prt

Other

# Show info (sizes, ratio, original filename)
./packrat -i compressed.prt

# Test integrity without extracting
./packrat -t compressed.prt

# Help
./packrat -h

Exit codes

• 0 - success
• 1 - generic error
• 2 - memory error
• 3 - format error
• 4 - file error
• 5 - corrupt data

Typical ratios

On text/source code, expect 10-25% of original size. Binary files vary. Already-compressed files (jpg, png, zip) won’t compress further - packrat detects high entropy and stores them uncompressed to avoid expansion.