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List of archive formats
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Compression formats)
This is a list of file formats used by archivers and compressors.
Contents |
| File extension(s)[1] | MIME type[2] | Official name[3] | Platform[4] | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| .a, .ar | Unix Archiver | Unix-like | The traditional archive format on Unix-like systems, now used mainly for the creation of static libraries. | |
| .cpio | application/x-cpio | Cpio | Unix-like | |
| .shar | application/x-shar | Shell archive | Unix-like | A self-extracting archive that uses the Bourne shell (sh). |
| .LBR | .LBR | MS-DOS | A system for storing multiple files. LBR archives typically contained files processed by SQ, or the archive itself was compressed with SQ. LBR archives that were compressed with SQ ended with the extension .LQR | |
| .tar | application/x-tar | Tape archive | Unix-like | A common archive format used on Unix-like systems. Generally used in common with gzip, bzip2 or compress to create .tar.gz, .tar.bz or .tar.Z files. |
| File extension(s)[1] | MIME type[2] | Official name[3] | Platform[4] | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| .bz2 | application/x-bzip2 | bzip2 | Unix-like | An open source, patent- and royalty-free compression format. The compression algorithm is a Burrows-Wheeler transform followed by a move-to-front transform and finally Huffman coding |
| .F | Freeze/melt | QNX4 | Old compressor for QNX4 OS. The compression algorithm is a modified LZSS, with an adaptive Huffman coding. | |
| .gz | application/x-gzip | gzip | Unix-like | GNU Zip, the primary compression format used by Unix-like systems. The compression algorithm is DEFLATE. |
| .lzma | lzma | Unix-like | The LZMA compression algorithm as used by 7-Zip | |
| .lzo | lzop | Unix-like | An implementation of the LZO data compression algorithm | |
| .rz | rzip | Unix-like | A compression program designed to do particularly well on very large files containing long distance redundancy. | |
| .?Q? | SQ | CP/M and MS-DOS | Squeeze: A program which compressed files. A file which was "squeezed" had the middle initial of the name changed to "Q", so that a squeezed text file would end with .TQT, a squeezed executable would end with .CQM or .EQE. Typically used with .LBR archives, either by storing the squeezed files in the archive, or by storing the files uncompressed and then compressing the archive, which would have a name ending in ".LQR". | |
| .z | application/x-compress | pack | Unix-like | The old Huffman coding compression format. |
| .Z | application/x-compress | compress | Unix-like | The traditional LZW compression format. |
| .??_ | MS-DOS/Windows | Compression format(s) used by some Windows and MS-DOS install programs. MS-DOS includes expand.exe to uncompress its install files. The compressed files are created with a matching compress.exe command. The compression algorithm is LZSS. |
| File extension(s)[1] | MIME type[2] | Official name[3] | Creation platform[4] | Restoration platform[5] | Restoring with free software[6] | Description | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| .7z | application/x-7z-compressed | 7-Zip | Multiple | Multiple | Yes | Open source file format. Used by 7-Zip. | |
| .s7z | application/x-7z-compressed | 7zX | Mac OS X | Mac OS X, restoration on different platforms is possible although not immediate | Yes | Based on 7z. Preserves Spotlight metadata, resource forks, owner/group informations, dates and other data which would be otherwise lost with compression.
Made obsolete by the introduction of AppleDouble-encoded 7z archives (Macintosh only). |
|
| .ace | application/x-ace-compressed | WinACE | Windows | Windows, GNU/Linux, Mac OS X | No[7] | ||
| .arc | ARC | DOS | Multiple | Yes | |||
| .alz | application/x-alz-compressed | ALZip | Windows | Multiple | Yes | A format designed for very large archives. | |
| .arj | ARJ | Originally DOS, now multiple | Multiple | Yes | |||
| .bh | BlakHole | No | Proprietary format from the ZipTV Compression Components | ||||
| .cab | application/vnd.ms-cab-compressed | Cabinet | Windows | Multiple | Yes | The Microsoft Windows native archive format, which is also used by many commercial installers such as InstallShield and WISE. | |
| .cpt | Compact Pro | Mac OS | Compact Pro archive, a common archiver used on Mac platforms until about Mac OS 7.5.x. Competed with StuffIt; now obsolete. | ||||
| .dar | application/x-dar | Disk Archiver | Windows, Unix-like | Windows, Unix-like | Yes | Open source file format. Files are compressed individually with either gzip or bzip2. | |
| .dd | DiskDoubler | Mac OS | obsolete | ||||
| .dgc | application/x-dgc-compressed | DGCA | Windows | Windows | |||
| .dmg | application/x-apple-diskimage | Disk Image | Mac OS X | Mac OS X | Supports "Internet-enabled" disk images, which, once downloaded, are automatically decompressed, mounted, have the contents extracted, and thrown away. Currently, Safari is the only browser that supports this form of extraction; however, the images can be manually extracted as well. This format can also be password-protected or encrypted with AES-128. | ||
| .gca | application/x-gca-compressed | GCA | The predecessor of DGCA. | ||||
| .hki | WinHKI | Multiple | Multiple | No | HKI | ||
| .ice | ICE | Windows | Windows | Yes | Produced by ICEOWS program. Excels at text file compression. | ||
| .j | Jar | Multiple | Multiple | Yes | Jar archive, the successor to ARJ | ||
| .kgb | KGB Archiver | Multiple | Multiple | Yes | Open sourced archiver with compression using the PAQ family of algorithms and optional encryption. | ||
| .lzh, .lha | application/x-lzh | LHA | Originally DOS, now multiple | Multiple | Yes | The standard format on Amiga. | |
| .lzx | application/x-lzx | LZX | Amiga | Archiver originally used on The Amiga. Now copied by Microsoft to use in their .cab and .chm files. | |||
| .partimg | PartImage | Multiple | Multiple | Yes | A disk image archive format that supports several compression methods as well as splitting the archive into smaller pieces. | ||
| .paq6, .paq7, .paq8 and variants | PAQ | Unix-like and Windows | Unix-like and Windows | Yes | An experimental open source packager (http://www.cs.fit.edu/~mmahoney/compression) | ||
| .pea | PeaZip | Linux and Windows | Linux and Windows | Yes | Open source archiver supporting authenticated encryption, volume spanning, customizable object level and volume level integrity checks (form CRCs to SHA512 and Whirlpool hashes), fast deflate based compression | ||
| .pim | PIM [1] | Windows | Windows | Yes | The format from the PIM - a freeware compression tool by Ilia Muraviev. It uses an LZP-based compression algorithm with set of filters for executable, image and audio files. | ||
| .pit | PackIt | Mac OS | obsolete | ||||
| .qda | Quadruple D | Windows | Windows | Used for data in games written using the Quadruple D library for Delphi. Uses byte pair compression. | |||
| .rar | application/x-rar-compressed | RAR | Originally DOS, now multiple | Multiple | No[8] | A proprietary archive format, second in popularity to .zip files. | |
| .rk | RK and WinRK [2] | Multiple | Multiple | No | The format from a commercial archiving package. Odd among commercial packages in that they focus on incorporating experimental algorithms with the highest possible compression (at the expense of speed and memory), such as PAQ, PPMD and PPMZ (PPMD with unlimited-length strings), as well as a proprietary algorithms. | ||
| .sea | sea | Mac OS | Mac OS (implicitly) | A pre-Mac OS X Self-Extracting Archive format. StuffIt, Compact Pro, Disk Doubler and others could create .sea files, though the StuffIt versions were the most common. | |||
| .sit | application/x-stuffit | StuffIt | Originally Mac OS, now multiple | Originally Mac OS, now multiple | No | A compression format common on Apple Macintosh computers. | |
| .sitx | application/x-stuffit | StuffIt | Multiple | Multiple | No | A new version of the .sit format that support more compression methods. | |
| .sqx | SQX | Windows | Windows | A royalty-free compressing format | |||
| .tar.gz, .tgz, .tar.Z, .tar.bz2, .tbz2, .tar.lzma, .tlz | application/x-gtar | tar with gzip, compress, bzip2, or lzma | Multiple | Multiple | Yes | The "tarball" format combines tar archives with a file-based compression scheme (usually gzip). Commonly used for source and binary distribution on Unix-like platforms, widely available elsewhere. | |
| .uha | UHarc | DOS/Windows | DOS/Windows | No | |||
| .xar | XAR | Multiple | Multiple | Yes | |||
| .zip | application/zip | ZIP | Originally DOS, now multiple | Multiple | Yes | The most widely used compression format on Microsoft Windows. Commonly used on Macintosh and Unix systems too. | |
| .zoo | zoo | Multiple | Multiple | Yes | |||
| .zz | Zzip | Multiple | Multiple | Yes | Archiver with a compression algorithm based on the Burrows-Wheeler transform method. |
| File extension(s)[1] | MIME type[2] | Official name[3] | Platform[4] | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| .ecc | dvdisaster error-correction file | Multiple | File format used by dvdisaster to be used for data recovery when discs become damaged or partially unreadable. | |
| .par .par2 |
Parchive file | Multiple | File format used in conjunction with any archive format to provide redundancy and data recovery, most often in newsgroup distribution of binary files. |
- ^ a b c d File extensions may differ across platforms. The case of these extensions may differ on case-insensitive platforms.
- ^ a b c d MIME media types may be conjectural. Very few have been officially registered with the IANA. Compression-only formats should often be denoted by the media type of the uncompressed data, with a content coding indicating the compression format.
- ^ a b c d Official names may be disputed.
- ^ a b c d Creation platform indicates the platform(s) under which a format can be created.
- ^ Restoration platform indicates the platform(s) under which a format can be restored/extracted. Most file formats can be understood by more than one platform.
- ^ "Restoring with free software" indicates whether the format can be restored using an extraction tool that is free software.
- ^ Only version 1.x ACE archives can be unpacked with free software.
- ^ Only version 2.0 RAR archives can be unpacked with free software. Since these are quite rare nowadays, for all practical purposes RAR archives can't be unpacked with free software. 7-zip for example uses a proprietary plugin under "unRAR license" for the newer archives while rest of 7-zip is free software under LGPL license.
- Unix-like — Systems such as Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc.
- GNU/Linux — Common only on Linux.
- Macintosh — Available for all versions of the Mac OS.
- Mac OS X — Only available on Mac OS X; OS X is also usually compatible with Unix-like formats.
- Windows — Microsoft Windows, always includes 32-bit x86 and often 64-bit x86-64 and IA64 versions.
- Amiga
|
|
|
|---|---|
| Archiving only | ar · cpio · shar · tar · LBR |
| Compression only | bzip2 · gzip · LZMA · lzop · rzip · SQ · compress · LZW |
| Archiving and compression | 7z · ACE · ARC · ALZip · ARJ · Cabinet · cpt · DAR · dd · DGCA · .dmg · GCA · kgb · LHA · LZX · PAQ · RAR · qda · sit · SQX · zoo · ZIP |
| Software packaging and distribution | deb · pkg · RPM · MSI · JAR (WAR · RAR (Java) · EAR) |