Each file can be stored separately, so that they can be accessed randomly and because they are archived individually, it makes it easy to extract them, or add new ones without even zipping in the entire archive. Multiple files can be compressed or zipped using several methods such as LZMA, WavPack, PPMd, BZIP2, DEFLATE, etc. Well, ZIP archives are capable of more than just compressing files they can encrypt files (password protected) and split archives with just a few clicks. Like other archive formats, ZIP files are data containers that contain one or more files together in a compressed or zipped format using Zip compression. The best part, ZIP files can be opened with any program that creates ZIP files. Today, ZIP is a widely used format for lossless data compression and is supported by several software utilities including the built-in ZIP support provided by Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Katz released his first compression program to use the new ZIP file format called PKZIP and subsequently released it into the public domain in 1989. However, the lawsuit was dropped followed by a legal settlement with the SEA. The lawsuit claimed that the archiving products of PKWARE were taken from the SEA’s proprietary ARC archiving system.

The ZIP file format was actually created by Phil Katz and Gary Conway following a lawsuit against PKWARE filed by System Enhancement Associates (SEA). This article explains the difference between ZIP and RAR files.

While a RAR file is an archival file created with the WinRAR program, which can be downloaded from the internet as a free trail for several days, ZIP file is a common file extension associated with several programs such as WinZIP, WinRAR, and Freebyte Zip. Both are compression algorithms that efficiently compress your files to reduce their size without affecting the content of the files. While both use the superfast LZ77 compression algorithm to compress and decompress content, surely one has a little edge over the other, may be in terms of speed and efficiency. They are undoubtedly the undisputed king of compressed files. ZIP and RAR are the most popular and widely used file formats to archive compressed data.

If you spend a great deal of your time downloading and uploading files from the internet, then you must have come across ZIP and RAR files.

Rar files to zip