ALZip supported archive file formats

.alz

Faster than an iron skillet! More powerful than a cock-a-doodling rooster! Able to compress large file groups in a single click! It's a bird! It's an egg! It's ALZ!

Developed by ESTsoft, the ALZ compression format is currently only supported by ALZip. The ALZ compression algorithm is optimized for large archives, so the bigger they get, the better ALZ performs. ALZ also supports self-extracting and spanned archives. ALZ spanned archive extensions follow the following naming scheme: alz, a00, a01, a02... a99, b00, b01, b02... b99, c00, c01, c02... Click here for more information on ALZ and spanned archives.

.alx

ALX files are ESTsoft native Digital Rights Management (DRM) files used by various ESTsoft media managers and applications.

.7z

The 7z file format uses LZMA as its default compression method (an improved LZ77 method). It also supports PPMD, BCJ, BCJ2, BZip2, and Deflate methods. 7z was developed by Igor Pavlov.

.ace

ACE is the WinAce native file format. ACE spanned archive extensions follow the following naming scheme: ace, c00, c01, c02... Changes to the ACE compression format have caused some incompatibilities between the different versions.

.arc

ARC is an older file format that has since become much less popular. It is used by pkarc.com and pkxarc.com, which are only run under DOS.

.arj

ARJ files are created by arj.exe for DOS and WinArj for Windows. ARJ spanned archive extensions follow the following naming scheme: arj, a00, a01, a02...

.b64

B64 files are BASE64 MIME encoded files. Note that this is not a compression format, but rather an encoding format. It is used to enable file transfers over the Internet.

.bh (1)

The mysterious BlakHole format... Though you'll often see this spelled as "BlackHole", the creator of this file format, Carl Bunton, spells it "blakhole" (no "c").

.bh (2)

BinHex (BH) files are sometimes used to send binary files by email. Although the extension is the same, they are not BlakHole files.

.bin

BIN CD images are used by CD burning programs to write CDs. ALZip can open BIN CD images directly from your hard disk and extract files from them.

.bin

BIN is a BinHex encoded file used to transfer files by email.

.bhx

BHX is Macintosh-based file. See .hqx.

.bz2

BZ2 is the archive file format used by the UNIX bzip2 program. This format only allows one file per archive. To include more than one file, it is generally used on TAR files. The combined extension is then .tar.bz2 and shortened as .bzip2 or .bz2.

.cab

CAB is the Microsoft Cabinet archive format.

.ear

EAR is essentially the same as ZIP, only the file extension is different.

.enc

The ENC format is used to transfer files in binary format by E-mail.

.gz

GZ files are created by the UNIX gzip program. They are commonly used with TAR files to produce .tar.gz or .tgz files. ALZip combines GZ with TAR to create TGZ files.

.hqx

HQX are BinHex files and are specific to the Macitosh platform.

.ice

ICE files are created by the DOS ice.exe program. They are identical to the .lha format.

.iso

ISO 9660 files are used for writing CDs. You can open them with ALZip to extract individual files.

.jar

JAR files are created by the JAVA jar.exe and use the same compression algorithm as ZIP files.

.lcd

LCD files are created virtual CD images created by CD Space.

.lha, .lzh

LHA and LZH are created by the DOS lha.exe and lharc.exe programs. They use the Lempel-Ziv algorithm. LZH is the dominant download file format in Japan.

.lh7

LH7 is a variation on the LHA/LZH compression format.

.mim

MIM files are used for Internet file transfers. They are similar to B64 files in some aspects.

.pak

PAK files are created by the DOS pak.exe program.

.rar

RAR files are created by WinRAR's rar.exe for DOS and winrar.exe for Windows. This file format supports both self-extracting files and spanned archives. RAR spanned archives follow the following format: rar, r00, r01, r02... OR part1.rar, part2.rar... partN.rar. The latter is the new RAR format, which ALZip also supports.

.tar

TAR, Z, GZ, TAZ, and TGZ file formats are often found on Unix-based sites. TAR stands for Tape ARchive. It does not provide compression, but is useful to group files together because GZ and Z files cannot contain multiple files. Usually TAR grouped files are compressed in GZ format. They then use the .tgz extension, shortened from .tar.gz.

.tgz

TGZ files are gzipped TAR files.

.uue

UUEncoded files are used to transfer files in binary format by E-mail.

.war

WAR is essentially the same as ZIP, only the file extension is different.

.xxe

XXEncoded files are used to transfer files in binary format by E-mail.

.zip

This is the most common file format on the internet today. It is used by the DOS pkzip.exe and pkunzip.exe programs. ALZip adopts the ZIP format as its default.

.zoo

ZOO files are created by the DOS zoo.exe program.

.001

001 or 00# files are parts of a single file that has been split by RZSplit, but are not necessarily archive or compressed files. They are numbered 001, 002, 003... n.

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