What is the difference between compression formats rar and zip?

The operating environment of this article: Windows 7 system, Dell G3 computer.

The difference between compression format rar and zip:

Popularity and scope of application

zip originated much earlier than rar, and its popularity is also higher wider than the latter. For zip, the operating system directly supports decompression and extraction of files, and the scope of application is far better than rar. To give a simple example, if you want to compress a bunch of photos and send them to friends, you will generally give priority to zip format compression. Because you don’t know whether the other party has installed decompression tools such as WinRAR. For zip format, there is no need to worry about this problem.

Compression rate and compression speed

Many people choose rar compression. The reason is that rar compression rate is higher than zip, and its small size is more convenient for network transmission. . This is due to rar's unique solid compression method, which can improve the file compression rate to a greater extent.

The high compression rate naturally comes with a price. Rar compression or decompression speed is generally slower than zip. The fast compression and decompression speed is naturally the advantage of the zip method.

Differences in nature and functions

As we all know, zip is open source software and rar is paid. The reason why their compression rates are quite different is actually because of different algorithms. Compared with zip, rar has more powerful functions. For example, rar's unique solid compression method can lock compressed files to prevent modification, and the recovery recording function can recover physically damaged data, etc. This is not available on zip.

Security difference

Both zip and rar can be password protected, but rar is more secure. Because zip is widely used and the code is open source, it is common for compressed files to be brute force cracked. For zip passwords, "plaintext attacks" are even more fatal. If you know a certain content of the encrypted compressed zip file, you can reverse the zip encryption password.

And rar is "a lesson learned from the past", and its appearance has made up for the security problems of zip. It uses the AES symmetric encryption algorithm that is currently recognized as having a high security factor, and the password length can be up to 128 characters. Even if you try to brute force it through the dictionary until the end of time, you still can't solve it.

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