B1 (archive format)

Last updated
B1
Filename extension
.b1
Internet media type
application/x-b1
Developed byCatalina Group Ltd
Initial release2011
Type of format Data compression

B1 is an open archive file format that supports data compression and archiving[ citation needed ]. B1 files use the file extension ".b1" or ".B1" and the MIME media type application/x-b1. B1 incorporates the LZMA compression algorithm. [1] B1 archive combines a number of files and folders into one or more volumes, optionally adding compression and encryption. Construction of the B1 archive involves creating a binary stream of records and building volumes of that stream. The B1 archive format supports password-based AES-256 encryption. [2] B1 files are created and opened with its native open-source B1 Pack Tool, as well as B1 Free Archiver utility. [3] [4]

Contents

B1 Pack Project

B1 Pack is an open-source software project that produces a cross-platform command-line tool and a Java library for creating and extracting file archives in the B1 archive format. Source code of the project is published at GitHub. [5] B1 Pack Project is released under the Apache License. [6] The B1 Pack Tool module builds a single executable JAR file which can create, list, and extract B1 archive files from a command-line interface. [7]

B1 format features

API features

Related Research Articles

gzip GNU file compression/decompression tool

gzip is a file format 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. Version 0.1 was first publicly released on 31 October 1992, and version 1.0 followed in February 1993.

ZIP is an archive file format 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 ARC compression format by Thom Henderson. The ZIP format was then quickly supported by many software utilities other than PKZIP. Microsoft has included built-in ZIP support in versions of Microsoft Windows since 1998 via the "Plus! 98" addon for Windows 98. Native support was added as of the year 2000 in Windows ME. Apple has included built-in ZIP support in Mac OS X 10.3 and later. Most free operating systems have built in support for ZIP in similar manners to Windows and Mac OS X.

RAR is a proprietary archive file format that supports data compression, error correction and file spanning. It was developed in 1993 by Russian software engineer Eugene Roshal and the software is licensed by win.rar GmbH. The name RAR stands for Roshal Archive.

Cabinet is an archive-file format for Microsoft Windows that supports lossless data compression and embedded digital certificates used for maintaining archive integrity. Cabinet files have .cab filename extensions and are recognized by their first four bytes MSCF. Cabinet files were known originally as Diamond files.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">7-Zip</span> Open-source file archiver

7-Zip is a free and open-source file archiver, 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.

7z is a compressed archive file format that supports several different data compression, encryption and pre-processing algorithms. The 7z format initially appeared as implemented by the 7-Zip archiver. The 7-Zip program is publicly available under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License. The LZMA SDK 4.62 was placed in the public domain in December 2008. The latest stable version of 7-Zip and LZMA SDK is version 22.01.

rzip is a huge-scale data compression computer program designed around initial LZ77-style string matching on a 900 MB dictionary window, followed by bzip2-based Burrows–Wheeler transform and entropy coding (Huffman) on 900 kB output chunks.

The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of file archivers. 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.

Squashfs is a compressed read-only file system for Linux. Squashfs compresses files, inodes and directories, and supports block sizes from 4 KiB up to 1 MiB for greater compression. Several compression algorithms are supported. Squashfs is also the name of free software, licensed under the GPL, for accessing Squashfs filesystems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">KGB Archiver</span>

KGB Archiver is a discontinued file archiver and data compression utility that employs the PAQ6 compression algorithm. Written in Visual C++ by Tomasz Pawlak, KGB Archiver is designed to achieve a very high compression ratio. It has ten levels of compression, from very weak to maximum. However, at higher compression levels, the time required to compress a file increases significantly. As a consequence, the program uses memory and CPU intensively.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">HTTP compression</span> Capability that can be built into web servers and web clients

HTTP compression is a capability that can be built into web servers and web clients to improve transfer speed and bandwidth utilization.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Self-extracting archive</span>

A self-extracting archive is a computer executable program which contains compressed data in an archive file combined with machine-executable program instructions to extract this information on a compatible operating system and without the necessity for a suitable extractor to be already installed on the target computer. The executable part of the file is known as a decompressor stub.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PeaZip</span> File archive computer program

PeaZip is a free and open-source file manager and file archiver for Microsoft Windows, ReactOS, Linux, MacOS and BSD by Giorgio Tani. It supports its native PEA archive format and other mainstream formats, with special focus on handling open formats. Version 8.6.0 supported 226 file extensions.

XZ Utils is a set of free software command-line lossless data compressors, including the programs lzma and xz, for Unix-like operating systems and, from version 5.0 onwards, Microsoft Windows. For compression/decompression the Lempel–Ziv–Markov chain algorithm (LZMA) is used. XZ Utils started as a Unix port of Igor Pavlov's LZMA-SDK that has been adapted to fit seamlessly into Unix environments and their usual structure and behavior.

FreeArc is a free and open-source high-performance file archiver developed by Bulat Ziganshin. The project is presumably discontinued no information has been released by developers since 2016 and the official website is down.

The EGG file format is a compressed archive file format that supports Unicode and intelligent compression algorithms. The EGG format was created by ESTsoft, and was first applied in their file compression software ALZip.

lzip Data compression utility

lzip is a free, command-line tool for the compression of data; it employs the Lempel–Ziv–Markov chain algorithm (LZMA) with a user interface that is familiar to users of usual Unix compression tools, such as gzip and bzip2.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zopfli</span> Data compression software

Zopfli is a data compression library that performs Deflate, gzip and zlib data encoding. It achieves higher compression ratios than mainstream Deflate and zlib implementations at the cost of being slower. Google first released Zopfli in February 2013 under the terms of Apache License 2.0.

Brotli is a lossless data compression algorithm developed by Google. It uses a combination of the general-purpose LZ77 lossless compression algorithm, Huffman coding and 2nd-order context modelling. Brotli is primarily used by web servers and content delivery networks to compress HTTP content, making internet websites load faster. A successor to gzip, it is supported by all major web browsers and has become increasingly popular, as it provides better compression than gzip.

References

  1. "B1 File Format" Whatis.com. Retrieved 13 January 2014.
  2. "B1 file extension - B1 compressed archive" File-Extensions.org. Retrieved 13 January 2014.
  3. "B1 File Extension" Fileinfo. Retrieved 14 January 2014.
  4. "Extract compressed files without any software" Archived 2014-01-21 at the Wayback Machine Digital Quest. Retrieved 13 January 2014.
  5. "B1-Pack" GitHub. Retrieved 13 January 2014.
  6. "The Apache Software License, v2.0" Retrieved 14 January 2014.
  7. "B1 Pack CLI" Retrieved 13 January 2014.
  8. "B1 Pack Project" Retrieved 14 January 2014.