LIF (Knowledge Dynamics)

.LIF is an installer-archive format, apparently associated with INSTALL for DOS, by Knowledge Dynamics Corporation. See RED (Knowledge Dynamics) for more information about INSTALL.

This article covers the LIF format that begins with a string of ASCII-encoded hex digits. Note that the presumed successor format, RED, also sometimes uses the .LIF filename extension.

File structure
A LIF file consists of a sequence of member file segments. Each member consists of a 54-byte header, then the file data, which is usually compressed.

The header starts with 34 bytes of ASCII-encoded hex digits. A filename follows. The bytes at offset 8 through 15 encode the compressed data size, which is needed to locate the next member.

Header structure
The 54-byte member header seems to have the following structure:

Compression methods
At least one of the compression methods appears to be a form of LZW. (TODO: Check if it could be the one described at, via .)

Sample files

 * → *.LIF
 * → *.LIF
 * → *.LIF