11.2 Decompressing Compressed Files: Expand

Expand (EXPAND.EXE) decompresses files previously compressed by Compress. Expand restores these files to their original sizes.

Command-line syntax for Expand is as follows:

expand [/?][/r] source destination

Following are command-line options and parameters for Expand:

/?

Displays information about how to use Expand.

/r

Specifies that compressed files should be renamed.

source

Specifies the source filename. The name can include a drive letter, a directory path, or both; and it can contain wildcards.

destination

Specifies the destination. This parameter can consist of a directory (with optional drive letter), a filename, or any combination of the two.

If the source parameter contains wildcards and the destination parameter does not specify only a directory, the /r option must be used.

If the destination parameter does not contain a filename, Expand uses the filename or filenames specified by the source parameter when Expand copies the file or files to the location specified by the destination parameter.

The following example shows how to create decompressed versions of all the files on drive A, writing them to a directory on drive C:

expand a:*.* c:\mydir