List of archive formats
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This is a list of file formats used by archivers and compressors.
Contents
Archiving only
Compression only
| File extension(s) | MIME type | Official name | Platform | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| .bz2 | application/x-bzip2 | bzip2 | Unix-like | An open-source, patent- and royalty-free compression format. |
| .gz | application/x-gzip | gzip | Unix-like | GNU Zip, the primary compression format used by Unix-like systems. |
| .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. | |
| .z | application/x-compress | pack | Unix-like | The old Huffman encoding compression format. |
| .Z | application/x-compress | compress | Unix-like | The traditional LZW compression format. |
| .F | Freeze/melt | QNX4 | Old compressor for QNX4 OS. | |
| .??_ | Windows | Compression format(s) used by some Windows install programs |
Archiving and compression
| File extension(s) | MIME type | Official name | Creation platform | Restoration platform(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(Restoring with free software)—Indicates whether the format can be restored using an extraction tool that is free software. | Description | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| .7z | application/x-7z-compressed | 7-Zip | Windows, Unix-like | Windows, Unix-like | style="background: #ddffdd" | | Open-source file format. Used by 7-Zip. | |
| .ace | application/x-ace-compressed | WinACE | Windows | Windows, GNU/Linux | style="background: #ddffdd" | | ||
| .arc | ARC | DOS | Multiple | style="background: #ddffdd" | | |||
| .alz | ALZ | Windows | Multiple | style="background: #ddffdd" | | A format designed for very large archives. | ||
| .arj | ARJ | Multiple | Multiple | style="background: #ddffdd" | | |||
| .cab | application/vnd.ms-cab-compressed | Cabinet | Windows | Multiple | style="background: #ddffdd" | | The Microsoft Windows native archive format, which is also used by many commercial installers such as InstallShield, WISE, and InstallAware. | |
| .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 | style="background: #ddffdd" | | Open source file format. Files are compressed individually with either gzip or bzip2. | |
| .dgc | application/x-dgc-compressed | DGCA | Windows | Windows | |||
| .dmg | application/octet-stream | 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. | ||||
| .ice | ICE | Windows | Windows | style="background: #ddffdd" | | Produced by ICEOWS program. Excels at textfile compression. | ||
| .j | Jar | Multiple | Multiple | style="background: #ddffdd" | | Jar archive, the successor to ARJ | ||
| .jar | application/x-java-archive | Jar | Multiple | Multiple | style="background: #ddffdd" | | Java Archive. This type is actually just a renamed ZIP archive with a mandatory manifest file. | |
| .lzh, .lha | application/x-lzh | LHA | Multiple | Multiple | style="background: #ddffdd" | | The standard format on Amiga. | |
| .lzx | application/x-lzx | LZX | Amiga | Archiver originally used on Amiga. Now used in the Microsoft .cab files. | |||
| .partimg | [Partimage] | Multiple | Multiple | style="background: #ddffdd" | | A disk image archive format that supports several compression methods as well as splitting the archive into smaller pieces. | ||
| .pq6 | PAQ6 | Unix-like and Windows | An experimental opensource packager (http://www.cs.fit.edu/~mmahoney/compression/#paq6) | ||||
| .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 | Multiple | Multiple | style="background: #ddffdd" | | A proprietary archive format, second in popularity to .zip files. | |
| .rk | RK and WinRK [link] | Multiple | Multiple |
Northern Ontario | 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 propriatary algorithms. | ||
| .sea | sea | Macintosh | 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 | Macintosh |
Northern Ontario | A compression format common on Apple Macintosh computers. | ||
| .sqx | SQX | Windows | A royalty-free compressing format | ||||
| .tar.gz, .tgz, .tar.Z, .tar.bz2, .tbz2 | application/x-gtar | tar with gzip, compress, or bzip2 | Multiple | Multiple | style="background: #ddffdd" | | 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 | Multiple | Multiple | style="background: #ddffdd" | | |||
| .zip | application/zip | ZIP | Originally DOS, now multiple | Multiple | style="background: #ddffdd" | | The most widely used compression format on Microsoft Windows. Commonly used on Macintosh and Unix systems too. | |
| .zoo | zoo | Multiple | Multiple | style="background: #ddffdd" | | zoo | ||
| .zz | [Zzip] | Multiple | Multiple | style="background: #ddffdd" | | Archiver with a compression algorithm based on the Burrows-Wheeler Transform method. |
| File extension(s) | MIME type | Official name | Platform | Description | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| .deb | application/x-debian-package | Debian package | GNU/Linux (and other GNU derivatives) | A software package format used on Debian and other Debian-based distributions. | |
| .ipk | Itsy Package | GNU/Linux (and other GNU derivatives) | A minimalistic derivative of the Debian package format used in handheld distributions and championed by [Handhelds.org] | ||
| .msi | Windows Installer | Windows | The now-standard software package format on Microsoft Windows. | ||
| .pkg, .mpkg, .dist | Package, Metapackage, Distribution | Mac OS X | A NeXTSTEP-derived package format that is used by the Installer application. | ||
| .rpm | application/x-rpm | RPM Package Manager, formerly Red Hat Package Manager | GNU/Linux | A software package format that was created by Red Hat. It is now used on many other distributions. | |
| .pbi | PC BSD Installer [?] | PC-BSD | Package format used on PC-BSD. It contains all necessary libraries (to avoid dependency hell). |
Footnotes
Platforms
- 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
See also
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