Comparison_of_file_archivers

Comparison of file archivers

Comparison of file archivers

General and technical information for a number of file archivers

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

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.

General information

Basic general information about the archivers.

Legend:
  Free/no cost   Paid   Cost depends
  Open source (licenses)   Proprietary

More information File archivers, Developer ...

Notes:

  1. As a WinZip translation.
  2. A general serial number was published on developer's website altools.com in August 2012.
  3. Included with macOS Core Services.
  4. Included in Microsoft Windows Windows Explorer shell since Windows Me.
  5. v0.36
  6. Linux & macOS only.

Operating system support

The operating systems the archivers can run on without emulation or compatibility layer. Ubuntu's own GUI Archive manager, for example, can open and create many archive formats (including Rar archives) even to the extent of splitting into parts and encryption and ability to be read by the native program. This is presumably a "compatibility layer."

More information File archivers, Windows ...

Notes:

  1. A separate 64-bit Windows x64 Edition version is also available.
  2. The Unix-like system port is known as p7zip. p7zip also is provided by FreeDOS.
  3. Bundled with Windows 10 since insider build 17063
  4. Also Acorn RISC OS, Atari, MVS, OS/2, VM/CMS, VMS and others.
  5. General Windows CE version.
  6. This program also has a POSIX version available.
  7. The programs for other platforms are called Unace, do not have the same GUI, and can only perform decompression.
  8. WinRAR is for Windows, RAR for other platforms.

Archiver features

Information about what common archiver features are implemented natively (without third-party add-ons).

More information File archivers, Data compression ...

Notes:

  1. Extracting/adding file and/or directory names into archive in either UTF-7, UTF-8 or UTF-16/UCS-2 encoding to support single file/directory name which contains characters from different languages. More recent versions of the zip file format have support for Unicode filenames.
  2. Commandline batch compression is available only for ZIP and ALZ formats.
  3. Traditionally, tar, cpio, or pax calls the external programs gzip and bzip2 to perform compression; these external programs usually come with systems that contain the archiver. This is the case for GNU tar. BSD tar uses its own implementation, since it also has to deal with archive formats that do their own compression.
  4. Many shells have built-in zip file support. Windows Explorer has "Send To"->"ZIP-compressed folder".
  5. Unicode and volumes since version 3.0 (2008). AES since 3.1 (in beta).
  6. UTF-8 file/path-names support was completed in release 3.0.1 on Unix systems, and in release 5.8.0 on Windows systems. GUI UTF-8 support for full internationalization of the application was completed in release 2.2.0. Optionally, extended characters can be set to be replaced by jolly "?" character for exporting scripts to legacy systems; scripts creation screen informs if commands are ANSI-safe, OEM-codepage-safe (on Windows), or requires UTF-8 compliant environment to run (system, command interpreter, etc).[40]
  7. Command-line batch compression and expansion requires free add-on software downloaded from the WinZip website.
  8. Does support Unicode names, but not under the default (initial) option settings: the user must tick "Use OEM conversion for filenames" under "General" on the "Miscellaneous" tab in the Configuration dialog to enable Unicode name support. Full support for Unicode files names by default is supported only for 7-Zip and RAR archive formats.
  9. Application is only for decompression.
  10. Allows for a variable amount of error correction. See also RAR (file format).
  11. In WinRAR 3.60, when opening 7-Zip archives which contains Unicode file/directory names, they will not be displayed correctly. There will be no problem extracting them, however.

Archive format support

Reading

Information about what archive formats the archivers can read. External links lead to information about support in future versions of the archiver or extensions that provide such functionality. Note that gzip, bzip2 and xz are compression formats rather than archive formats.

More information File archivers, ZIP ...

Notes:

  1. Used to, but no longer does, due to technical and legal issues.
  2. Archive Utility itself is unable to open ISO files, but Disk Utility, which also comes with macOS, is able to mount them as virtual disks.
  3. B1 Free Archiver for Android and B1 Online Archiver support ARJ format.
  4. Supports these formats as compression stream of other archive formats like tar.bz2 or iso.xz but does not support the format as an archive itself, as they are not archive formats. See the above explanation for tar.
  5. libarchive has issues reading RAR formats, some partial reads are unsupported hence broken for generic usage.[41]
  6. FreeARC uses .arc as its filename extension, but this format is not the same as the traditional ARC file.
  7. GNU tar lets you implement your own filters,[42] allowing you to use other compression programs (p7zip, ...) and filters (GPG, ...).
  8. Tar implementations call external programs (like compress, gzip or bzip2 or any other programs working with abstract streams and supporting the "-d" option) to perform (de)compression, and allowing you to implement your own filters.[lower-alpha 7] These external programs may be shipped with your operating system.
  9. Only partial support for reading proprietary SITX format.[43]
  10. Starting from version 11.
  11. Requires external program.[44]
  12. Requires external program.[45]

Writing

Information about what archive formats the archivers[5] can write and create. External links lead to information about support in future versions of the archiver or extensions that provide such functionality. Note that gzip, bzip2 and xz are compression formats rather than archive formats.

More information File archivers, ZIP ...

Notes:

  1. ^ Tar implementations call the external programs gzip and bzip2, 7z, xz, ... to perform compression; these external programs usually come with systems that contain tar.
  2. ^ Requires rar.exe from WinRAR.
  3. ^ Requires external program(if you are using WinZip 11.1 or earlier).[46]
  4. ^ Requires Ace32.exe from WinAce.
  5. ^ The Extractor and XAD are not included in this list because they only expand archives.
  6. ^ ALZip can also write to the following formats: BH, JAR, and LZH
  7. ^ Updating archives is not supported.[45]
  8. ^ Requires external program.[45]
  9. ^ Stuffit supported file formats[47]
  10. ^ Ark is a front-end only and requires appropriate command-line programs be installed. Programs like bzip2, gzip, tar, zip usually come with systems that contain Ark; writing in .rar format requires a commercial program.[48]
  11. ^ Xarchiver is a front-end only and requires appropriate command-line programs be installed. Programs like bzip2, gzip, tar, zip usually come with systems that contain Xarchiver; writing in .rar format requires a commercial program.[49][50]
  12. ^ Archive Manager (previously known as "File Roller") is a front-end only and requires appropriate command-line programs be installed. Programs like bzip2, gzip, tar, zip usually come with systems that contain Archive Manager. writing in .rar format requires a commercial program.[51]
  13. ^ If there are more than one, files must be grouped in a .tar before being compressed.
  14. ^ supports the formats as stream compression of other archive format and can create compressed format like tar.bz2 or iso.xz but cannot create an archive in these formats
  15. ^ it is possible to open war and jar files to extract e add/replace file; files war and jar are still valid after that
  16. ^ it require console rar.exe, and the path to it -- specified in Options . it can be taken from WinRAR software . PowerArchiever also doesn't support separate definition of the Dictionary Size and Compression Method .

Uncommon archive format support

PeaZip has full support for Brotli, Zstandard, various LPAQ and PAQ formats, QUAD / BALZ / BCM (highly efficient ROLZ based compressors), FreeArc format, and for its native PEA format.

7-Zip includes read support for .msi, cpio and xar, plus Apple's dmg/HFS disk images and the deb/.rpm package distribution formats; beta versions (9.07 onwards) have full support for the LZMA2-compressed .xz format.[52]

See also

References

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    "Android: Version 6.9.0; Updated on Jun 12, 2023". 12 June 2023. Retrieved 30 June 2023.
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    "App store: Version History 7.11; Jun 26, 2023". 26 June 2023. Retrieved 30 June 2023.
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    "MacOS Version History: 10.0.6204 Mar 21, 2023". 21 March 2023. Retrieved 30 June 2023.
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    "WinZip (64-bit) August, 24th 2022". 24 August 2022. Retrieved 30 June 2023.
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    "Release 0.5.4.23". 29 February 2024. Retrieved 26 March 2024.
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    "Release 7.15". 22 September 2016. Retrieved 15 March 2018.
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    "RAR - Android Apps on Google Play". Retrieved 2 July 2016.
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    "HISTORY of the 7-Zip". www.7-zip.org. 2010-04-15. Retrieved 2010-04-24.

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