Compressed Archive File

Files with ZIP extension are targeted on archiving and compressing files. This file type was created by Phil Katz for his program PKZIP. It was mainly used in 90s. To main advantages of this file format are integration into most spread operating systems, it also uses few compress algorithms, so you can choose one of them for your file.

This format was released in 1989 for PKZIP. It was released to fight against rival formats of its time, mainly against format ARC. Today there is its version marked as 6.3.3 that was launched on 1st September, 2012. From this file format are derived many other file types, for example JAR or ODF. Jar file format is zipped file, which has saved Java files in itself. Also this file format is used to compress certain files, which can be easily unpacked.

The best way to open this file format is use option in operating system. Besides that you can also use program 7 – Zip, which can open them.

We can convert zip into the following formats

• Archiving and compression

• 7z - 7-Zip Compressed File
• arj - Archived by Robert Jung
• bz - Bzip UNIX Compressed File
• bz2 - Bzip 2 UNIX Compressed File
• gz - GZIP Compressed File
• lhz - Compressed Archive File
• rar - WinRAR Compressed Archive
• tar - Tape Archive File