WinRAR
WinRAR
Main page

WinRAR

logo
Community Hub0 subscribers
What are your thoughts?
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
WinRAR

WinRAR is a trialware file archiver utility, developed by Eugene Roshal of win.rar GmbH. It can create and view archives in RAR or ZIP file formats, and unpack numerous archive file formats. To enable the user to test the integrity of archives, WinRAR embeds CRC-32 or BLAKE2 checksums for each file in each archive. WinRAR supports creating encrypted, multi-part and self-extracting archives. WinRAR is a Windows-only program. An Android application called "RAR for Android" is also available. Related programs include the command-line utilities "RAR" and "UNRAR" and versions for macOS, Linux, FreeBSD, WinCE, and MS-DOS.

RAR/DOS started as a mix of x86 assembler and C, with the amount of assembly code decreasing over time and moving to pure C/C++ later on. The first versions of WinRAR were written in C, modern versions are using C++. RAR for Android is written as a mixture of Java and C++.[1]

WinRAR and the RAR file format have evolved over time. Support for the archive format RAR5, using the same RAR file extension as earlier versions, was added in version 5.0; the older RAR file format has since been referred to as RAR4. WinRAR versions before 5.0 do not support RAR5 archives; only older versions of WinRAR run on older operating systems, and cannot open RAR5 archives.

The RAR5 file format - from version 7 on, referred to as "RAR" - increased the maximum dictionary size up to 64 GB, depending on the amount of available memory, with the default in version 5 increased from 4 MB to 32 MB, typically improving compression ratio. For dictionaries larger than 4 GB, the size can be specified if it is unequal to a power of 2. Thus, there are no restrictions to the range 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, allowing 5 GB or 22 GB to be chosen at will. Archives with dictionaries larger than 4 GB can only be extracted by WinRAR 7.0 or newer. AES encryption, when used, is in CBC mode and was increased in strength from 128- to 256-bit. Maximum path length for files in RAR and ZIP archives is increased from 2047 to 65535 characters.

Options added in v5.0 include 256-bit BLAKE2 file-hashing algorithm instead of default 32-bit CRC-32, duplicate file detection, NTFS hard and symbolic links, and Quick Open record to allow large archives to be opened faster.

The RAR5 file format removed comments for each file (though archive comment still remains), authenticity verification, and specialized compression algorithms for text and multimedia files. RAR5 also changed the file name for split volumes from "archivename.rNN" to "archivename.partNN.rar".

The RAR7 file format added support for 64GB compression dictionary and improved compression ratio by adding two extra algorithms. RAR7 archives with dictionary sizes up to 4GB can be unpacked by previous versions of WinRAR (5.0 and above) given there's enough RAM.

On the 31st of May 2024, Winrar announced that they would no longer offer the physical CD delivery option due to the factory that produces them shutting, citing a lack of demand and support for optical media.

See all
User Avatar
No comments yet.