EntityQ136218· pop 43· linked from 548 articles

ZIP

type of archive file format

Key facts

Filename extension: .zip , .zipx , .z01 , .zx01
Internet media type: application/zip application/x-zip-compressed
Uniform type identifier uti: com.pkware.zip-archive
Magic number: none PK\x03\x04 PK\x05\x06 (empty) PK\x07\x08 (spanned)
Developed by: PKWARE, Inc.
Initial release: 14 February 1989 ; 37 years ago ( 1989-02-14 )
Latest release: 6.3.10, 1 November 2022 ; 3 years ago ( 2022-11-01 )
Type of format: Data compression
Extended to: JAR , .ipa , .apk ( EAR , RAR (Java) , WAR ) Office Open XML Open Packaging Conventions OpenDocument XPI dotLottie
Standard: APPNOTE from PKWARE ISO/IEC 21320-1:2015 (a subset of ZIP file format 6.3.3)
Open format: Some variants

via Wikipedia infobox

Article

ZIP is an archive file format that supports lossless data compression. A ZIP file may contain one or more files or directories that may have been compressed. The ZIP file format permits a number of compression algorithms, though DEFLATE is the most common.

This format was originally created in 1989 and was first implemented in PKWARE, Inc.'s PKZIP utility, as a replacement for the previous ARC compression format by Thom Henderson. The ZIP format was then quickly supported by many software utilities other than PKZIP. The ZIP format is natively supported on major operating systems (e.g. Android, ChromeOS, iOS, Linux, macOS, and Windows). It is typically built in to the operating system's program for managing files.