RAR
RAR (Roshal Archive) is a compressed archive format used by the compression software RAR and WinRAR. It was originally for DOS, but has been widely used on Windows (as WinRAR) and other platforms.
The developers make the decompression code available for use in other programs and allow its distribution, but with a license provision that "You cannot use the unrar source to re-create the RAR compression algorithm, which is proprietary."
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Discussion
RAR can be considered to be a family of three main file formats:
- The (obsolete) format used by RAR before v1.50
- The format associated with RAR v1.50 through v4.x
- "RAR 5.0" format
Even within one of these classes, there can be significant differences between different RAR versions.
File identification
RAR files made by versions prior to v1.50 start with bytes 52 45 7e 5e.
RAR files associated with versions 1.50 through 4.20 start with 7 signature bytes: 52 61 72 21 1a 07 00.
"RAR 5.0" format starts with 8 signature bytes: 52 61 72 21 1a 07 01 00.
Specifications
Before v1.50:
- RAR140DC.EXE (self-extracting RAR archive) → technote.doc
v1.50-4.20:
- wrar420.exe (self-extracting RAR archive) → TechNote.txt
5.0 format:
Various:
Software
- WinRAR website
- Konvertor
- 7-Zip
- The Unarchiver
- RAR: Various versions, at old-dos.ru
- WinRAR: Various versions, at old-dos.ru
- SAC archive, PACK section - Has lots of RAR software, but no easy way to get a list of it.
Sample files
- http://cd.textfiles.com/ataricompendium/FILES/MISC/PRTFOLIO/
- http://cd.textfiles.com/thebbsorg/max_files/
- https://telparia.com/fileFormatSamples/archive/rar/ → *.rar
