Cabinet (file format)

Cabinet (or CAB) is an for Microsoft Windows that supports lossless data compression and embedded digital certificates used for maintaining archive integrity. Cabinet files have .cab s and are recognized by their first four bytes (also called their ) MSCF. Cabinet files were known originally as Diamond files. A CAB archive can contain up to 65,535 folders (distinct to standard operating system directories), each of which can contain up to 65,535 files for a maximum of 4,294,836,225. Internally, each folder is treated as a single compressed block, which provides more efficient compression than individually compressing each file. Every entry in a folder has to be a file. Due to this structure, it is not possible to store empty folders in CAB archives. The following shows an example a CAB file structure, demonstrating the relationship between folders and files: CAB file First folder Second folder How paths should be handled is not specified in the CAB file format, leaving it to the software implementation: Some affix file paths to filenames only, as if all files in a CAB archive are in a single folder. IExpress works this way, as does Microsoft Windows Explorer, which can open CAB archives as a folder. Some can store the paths, and upon extraction, create folders as necessary. and (tools from Microsoft Cabinet SDK) as well as and (third-party open-source tools) work this way. only since version 6 (which is included from Windows Vista to above) can extract files to their paths. The previous versions don't do it. The CAB file format may employ the following compression algorithms: DEFLATE: invented by Phil Katz, the author of the (specifically, the MSZIP encapsulation) Quantum compression: licensed from David Stafford, the author of the Quantum archiver (not available in all versions of makecab.exe/diamond.exe) LZX: invented by Jonathan Forbes and Tomi Poutanen, given to Microsoft when Forbes joined the company NULL: stored A CAB archive can reserve empty spaces in the archive as well as for each file in the archive, for some application-specific uses like digital signatures or arbitrary data.

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Comparison of file archivers

The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of s. Please see the individual products' articles for further information. They are neither all-inclusive nor are some entries necessarily up to date. Unless otherwise specified in the footnotes section, comparisons are based on the stable versions—without add-ons, extensions or external programs. Note: Archivers with names cell background highlighted in purple are no longer in development. Basic general information about the archivers.

Cabinet (file format)

7-Zip

7-Zip is a free and open-source , a utility used to place groups of files within compressed containers known as "archives". It is developed by Igor Pavlov and was first released in 1999. 7-Zip has its own archive format called 7z, but can read and write several others. The program can be used from a Windows graphical user interface that also features shell integration, from a Windows command-line interface as the command 7za or 7za.exe, and from POSIX systems as p7zip. Most of the 7-Zip source code is under the LGPL-2.