Compression is a process of reducing the size of a data file through different encoding techniques. This results in reducing data size for efficient data transmission and storage. Compression techniques have evolved over the passage of time and different file formats have been introduced for storing and manipulating compressed file formats.

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Compression File Formats

The Compression file format category on FileFormat.com includes file formats that are commonly used for compressing files. Let us have a look at some of these file formats.

ZIP

ZIP file extension represents archives that can hold one or more files or directories. The archive can have compression applied to the included files in order to reduce the ZIP file size. ZIP file format was made public back in February 1989 by Phil Katz for achieving archiving of files and folders. The format was made part of PKZIP utility, created by PKWARE, Inc. Right after the availability of available specifications, many companies made ZIP file format part of their software utilities including Microsoft (since Windows 7), Apple (Mac OS X ) and many others.

RAR

Files with RAR extension represent archive files that are created for storing information in compressed or normal form. RAR, Roshal Archive file format, is a proprietary file format created by Eugene Roshal in 1995 who was a Russian software engineer. The format is used to archive files with different methods including various compression techniques. There are several application software available for Windows, Linux and MacOS for extraction of RAR files. WinRAR software, by RARLab, is the shareware file archiving utility (free for 40 days) for Microsoft Windows platform; the software was ported to Linux (only as extractor) by the same Author, Eugene Roshal.

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