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Comparison of file archivers
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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This article compares several notable file archiver utilities. Unless otherwise noted, comparisons are for full release versions (not prerelease) and for installations without extra aspects such as add-ons, extensions or external programs.
General information
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Legend:
Free/no cost Paid Cost depends
Open source (licenses) Proprietary
Notes:
- Included with macOS Core Services.
- Included in Microsoft Windows Windows Explorer shell since Windows Me.
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Operating system support
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The following table identifies the operating systems that archivers can run on directly – without emulation or a compatibility layer.
Notes:
- A separate 64-bit Windows x64 Edition version is also available.
- General Windows CE version.
- This program also has a POSIX version available.
- The programs for other platforms are called Unace, do not have the same GUI, and can only perform decompression.
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Archiver features
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The following table indicates which archivers implement various archiver features natively – without third-party add-ons.
Notes:
- 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.
- 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.
- Many shells have built-in zip file support. Windows Explorer has "Send To"->"ZIP-compressed folder".
- 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).[37]
- 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.
- Allows for a variable amount of error correction. See also RAR (file format).
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Archive format support
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Reading
The following table identifies the archive formats that each archiver can read. Note that gzip, bzip2 and xz are compression formats rather than archive formats.
Notes:
- 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.
- libarchive has issues reading RAR formats, some partial reads are unsupported hence broken for generic usage.[38]
- FreeARC uses
.arc
as its filename extension, but this format is not the same as the traditional ARC file. - GNU tar lets you implement your own filters,[39] allowing you to use other compression programs (p7zip, ...) and filters (GPG, ...).
- 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.[g] These external programs may be shipped with your operating system.
- Only partial support for reading proprietary SITX format.[40]
- Requires external program.[41]
- Requires external program.[42]
Writing
The following table identifies the archive formats that each archiver[a] can write and create. Note that gzip, bzip2 and xz are compression formats rather than archive formats.
Notes:
- 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.[43]
- 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.[44]
- Stuffit supported file formats[45]
- Requires external program(if you are using WinZip 11.1 or earlier).[46]
- Updating archives is not supported.[42]
- Requires external program.[42]
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.[49]
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See also
References
Further reading
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