Also known as .rar, Roshal Archive, RAR format, RAR file format, RAR (Roshal Archive)
file format family
Key facts
- Filename extension
- .rar, .rev, .r00, .r01
- Internet media type
- application/vnd.rar
- Uniform type identifier uti
- com.rarlab.rar-archive
- Magic number
- 52 61 72 21 1A 07 00 , (RAR 1.5 to 4.0), 52 61 72 21 1A 07 01 00 , (RAR 5+)
- Size limitation
- 2 -1 bytes (almost 8 exbibytes )
- Developed by
- Eugene Roshal
- Initial release
- March 1993 ; 33 years ago ( 1993-03 )
- Type of format
- archive format
- Free format
- No (decompression source code publicly available, but not free software , with restriction that it "cannot be used to develop RAR (WinRAR) compatible archiver")
- Website
- rarlab.com
via Wikipedia infobox
Described at
Link to a page describing this subject · 23,687 chars · not written by Vinony
~7 min read
Encyclopedic overview
(Learn how and when to remove this message)
RAR is a proprietary archive file format that supports data compression, error correction and file spanning. It was developed in 1993 by Russian software engineer Eugene Roshal and the software is licensed by win.rar GmbH. The name RAR stands for Roshal Archive.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “RAR” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.