Comparison of file archiversThe 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.
ZIP (file format)ZIP is an that supports lossless data compression. A ZIP file may contain one or more files or directories that may have been compressed. The ZIP file format permits a number of compression algorithms, though DEFLATE is the most common. This format was originally created in 1989 and was first implemented in PKWARE, Inc.'s PKZIP utility, as a replacement for the previous compression format by Thom Henderson. The ZIP format was then quickly supported by many software utilities other than PKZIP.
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.
Lempel–Ziv–Markov chain algorithmThe Lempel–Ziv–Markov chain algorithm (LZMA) is an algorithm used to perform lossless data compression. It has been under development since either 1996 or 1998 by Igor Pavlov and was first used in the 7z format of the 7-Zip archiver. This algorithm uses a dictionary compression scheme somewhat similar to the LZ77 algorithm published by Abraham Lempel and Jacob Ziv in 1977 and features a high compression ratio (generally higher than bzip2) and a variable compression-dictionary size (up to 4 GB), while still maintaining decompression speed similar to other commonly used compression algorithms.
Zlibzlib ('zi:lIb or "zeta-lib", 'zi:t@,lIb) is a software library used for data compression as well as a data format. zlib was written by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler and is an abstraction of the DEFLATE compression algorithm used in their gzip file compression program. zlib is also a crucial component of many software platforms, including Linux, macOS, and iOS. It has also been used in gaming consoles such as the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Wii U, Wii, Xbox One and Xbox 360. The first public version of Zlib, 0.
DeflateIn computing, Deflate (stylized as DEFLATE) is a lossless data compression that uses a combination of LZ77 and Huffman coding. It was designed by Phil Katz, for version 2 of his PKZIP archiving tool. Deflate was later specified in RFC 1951 (1996). Katz also designed the original algorithm used to construct Deflate streams. This algorithm was patented as , and assigned to PKWARE, Inc. As stated in the RFC document, an algorithm producing Deflate files was widely thought to be implementable in a manner not covered by patents.
Gzipgzip is a and a software application used for file compression and decompression. The program was created by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler as a free software replacement for the compress program used in early Unix systems, and intended for use by GNU (from where the "g" of gzip is derived). Version 0.1 was first publicly released on 31 October 1992, and version 1.0 followed in February 1993. The decompression of the gzip format can be implemented as a streaming algorithm, an important feature for Web protocols, data interchange and ETL (in standard pipes) applications.
Tar (computing)In computing, tar is a computer software utility for collecting many files into one , often referred to as a tarball, for distribution or backup purposes. The name is derived from "tape archive", as it was originally developed to write data to sequential I/O devices with no file system of their own. The archive data sets created by tar contain various parameters, such as name, timestamps, ownership, file-access permissions, and directory organization. POSIX abandoned tar in favor of pax, yet tar sees continued widespread use.
File formatA file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a . It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary or free. Some file formats are designed for very particular types of data: PNG files, for example, store bitmapped using lossless data compression. Other file formats, however, are designed for storage of several different types of data: the Ogg format can act as a container for different types of multimedia including any combination of audio and video, with or without text (such as subtitles), and metadata.
Lossless compressionLossless compression is a class of data compression that allows the original data to be perfectly reconstructed from the compressed data with no loss of information. Lossless compression is possible because most real-world data exhibits statistical redundancy. By contrast, lossy compression permits reconstruction only of an approximation of the original data, though usually with greatly improved compression rates (and therefore reduced media sizes).
