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Filename extension | .rar, .rev, .r00, .r01 |
---|---|
Internet media type | application/vnd.rar |
Uniform Type Identifier (UTI) | com.rarlab.rar-archive |
Magic number | 52 61 72 21 1A 07 00 (RAR 1.5 to 4.0) 52 61 72 21 1A 07 01 00 (RAR 5+) [1] |
Size limitation | 263-1 bytes (almost 8 exbibytes) |
Developed by | Eugene Roshal |
Initial release | March 1993 [2] |
Type of format | archive format |
Open format? | No (decompression source code available, but not free software, due to restriction that it not be used to create RAR-compatible archives) |
Website | rarlab.com |
RAR is a proprietary archive file format that supports data compression, error correction and file spanning. [3] It was developed in 1993 by Russian software engineer Eugene Roshal and the software is licensed by win.rar GmbH. [3] The name RAR stands for Roshal Archive.
The filename extensions used by RAR are .rar
for the data volume set and .rev
for the recovery volume set. Previous versions of RAR split large archives into several smaller files, creating a "multi-volume archive". Numbers were used in the file extensions of the smaller files to keep them in the proper sequence. The first file used the extension .rar
, then .r00
for the second, and then .r01
, .r02
, etc.
RAR compression applications and libraries (including GUI based WinRAR application for Windows, console rar utility for different OSes and others) are proprietary software, to which Alexander L. Roshal, [3] the elder brother of Eugene Roshal, owns the copyright. Version 3 of RAR is based on Lempel-Ziv (LZSS) and prediction by partial matching (PPM) compression, specifically the PPMd implementation of PPMII by Dmitry Shkarin. [4]
The minimum size of a RAR file is 20 bytes. The maximum size of a RAR file is 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 (263−1) bytes, which is one byte less than 8 EiB. [5]
The RAR file format revision history:
Software is available for Microsoft Windows (named WinRAR), Linux, FreeBSD, macOS, and Android; archive extraction is supported natively in ChromeOS. WinRAR supports the Windows graphical user interface (GUI); other versions named RAR run as console commands. Later versions are not compatible with some older operating systems previously supported:
RAR files can be created legally only with commercial software WinRAR (Windows), RAR [8] for Android, command-line RAR (Windows, MS-DOS, macOS, Linux, and FreeBSD), and other software that has written permission from Alexander Roshal or uses copyrighted code under license from Roshal. The software license agreements forbid reverse engineering. [3]
Several programs can unpack the file format.
unrar
program. [9] The license permits its use to produce software capable of unpacking, but not creating, RAR archives, without having to pay a fee. It is not a free software license.The filename extension rar is also used by the unrelated Resource Adapter aRchive file format. [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29]
ARJ is a software tool designed in 1991 by Robert K. Jung for creating high-efficiency compressed file archives. ARJ is currently on version 2.86 for MS-DOS and 3.20 for Microsoft Windows and supports 16-bit, 32-bit and 64-bit Intel architectures.
WinZip is a trialware file archiver and compressor for Microsoft Windows, macOS, iOS and Android. It is developed by WinZip Computing, which is owned by Alludo. The program can create archives in Zip file format, unpack some other archive file formats and it also has various tools for system integration.
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 macOS.
Info-ZIP is a set of open-source software to handle ZIP archives. It has been in circulation since 1989. It consists of 4 separately-installable packages: the Zip and UnZip command-line utilities; and WiZ and MacZip, which are graphical user interfaces for archiving programs in Microsoft Windows and classic Mac OS, respectively.
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.
4DOS is a command-line interpreter by JP Software, designed to replace the default command interpreter COMMAND.COM
in Microsoft DOS and Windows. It was written by Rex C. Conn and Tom Rawson and first released in 1989. Compared to the default, it has a large number of enhancements.
StuffIt Expander is a proprietary, freeware, closed source, decompression software utility developed by Allume Systems. It runs on the classic Mac OS, macOS, and Microsoft Windows. Prior to 2011, a Linux version had also been available for download.
For Microsoft Windows, OS/2, and DOS, .exe is the filename extension that denotes a file as being executable – a computer program – containing an entry point.
WinRAR is a trialware file archiver utility for Windows, developed by Eugene Roshal of win.rar GmbH. It can create and view archives in RAR or ZIP file formats, and unpack numerous archive file formats. To enable the user to test the integrity of archives, WinRAR embeds CRC32 or BLAKE2 checksums for each file in each archive. WinRAR supports creating encrypted, multi-part and self-extracting archives.
LHA or LZH is a freeware compression utility and associated file format. It was created in 1988 by Haruyasu Yoshizaki, a doctor and originally named LHarc. A complete rewrite of LHarc, tentatively named LHx, was eventually released as LH. It was then renamed to LHA to avoid conflicting with the then-new MS-DOS 5.0 LH command. The original LHA and its Windows port, LHA32, are no longer in development because Yoshizaki is busy at work.
In computing, ACE is a proprietary data compression archive file format developed by Marcel Lemke, and later bought by e-merge GmbH. The peak of its popularity was 1999–2001, when it provided slightly better compression rates than RAR, which has since become more popular.
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.
File Manager is a file manager program bundled with releases of OS/2 and Microsoft Windows between 1988 and 1999 and available from 6 April 2018 as an optional download for all modern releases of Windows, including Windows 10.
A self-extracting archive is a computer executable program which combines compressed data in an archive file with machine-executable code to extract the information. Running on a compatible operating system, it does not need a suitable extractor in the target computer to extract the data. The executable part of the file is known as a decompressor stub.
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 9.4.0 supported 234 file extensions.
UnRAR is the name of two different command-line applications for extracting RAR file archives.
Eugene Roshal is a Russian software engineer.
FreeArc is a free and open-source high-performance file archiver developed by Bulat Ziganshin. The project is presumably discontinued, since no information has been released by the developers since 2016 and the official website is down.
The author and holder of the copyright of the software is Alexander L. Roshal. [...] Neither RAR binary code, WinRAR binary code, UnRAR source or UnRAR binary code may be used or reverse engineered to re-create the RAR compression algorithm, which is proprietary, without written permission.