Development: File Formats

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[edit] Archive File Formats

See also: An overview of the compression methods used: Development: Compression Methods

A decent effort made at the Comp.Compression FAQ by the 7-Zip Guy:

However, here we will be more thorough and get into more of the programming end and into more specifics.

Some general Links:

Format Details
7Z GNU LGPL
ARC See: Development: ARC File Format
ARJ Proprietary (extract-only). UNARJ Source
BZ
BZ2
CAB Info about the Quantum Compression method (The rest are doc'ed in the MS CAB SDK)
GZ There's a couple of RFCs...
ICE There are a couple that have this extension.
ICEOWS Fully Proprietary, Windows only: Iceows
  • RN - I'd like to see this on other platforms and with support for .shk and .Z files.
IMP Proprietary (extract-only): UNIMP Source
JAR http://homepage1.nifty.com/dangan/en/Content/Program/Java/jLHA/Notes/Notes.html

There are two types of JAR files:

  • ARJ JAR: Postcursor to arj format, fully proprietary.
  • JAVA JAR: A ZIP file, literally.
LHA
LZX Proprietary Amiga-only format. There's a unlzx.c floating around, with a windows port of it also.
PAK Exact same file format as ARC files. Note that PAK supports additional compression methods as documented in the ARC File Format page.
RAR Proprietary (?) (extract-only): UNRAR Source
SFX Bytes 1-3 - Jump intr. First header is bootstrap program.
SHK Shrinkit archives (Apple IIGS). See http://www.nulib.com/library/ for info.
SIT Fully Proprietary, but somebody reverse engineered it :). See MacUtils, sit, and unsit on unix.
TAR Not compressed. More like a directory. There should be a tar stream in wxWidgets now or soon.
UU UUENCODE. Not technically compressed, but in practice is.

Some info: http://membrane.com/synapse/library/uuenc.html

Y Yabbawhap (link in Comp.Compression is bad): http://www.mit.edu/afs/sipb/project/sipbsrc/src/yabbawhap/
Z See: Development: Z File Format
ZIP
ZOO LZSS...

[edit] Multimedia File Formats

Format Details
AIF http://shoko.calarts.edu:16080/~tre/AIFFC/
AU SUN AU Files.
CDA Windows CD-Audio Format: http://www.csdn.net/Dev/Format/sound/cda.htm
MP1
MP2 Public Domain Decoder Source - http://lhodor.home.ro/MPEG/
MP3 Quantization, IMDCT, etc...

Some unsorted links:

WAV http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hwdev/tech/audio/multichaud.mspx#XSLTsection132121120120

See: Development: WAV File Format

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