Zoo (file format)

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zoo
File extension : .zoo
MIME type : application / x-zoo
Magic number : ZOO 


Zoo is a file format for compressed data archiving .

The data compression is based on the Lempel-Ziv-Welch algorithm (LZW). The filename extension is .zoo provided for files of this format . The reference implementation was developed in the C programming language .

features

In a zoo archive several files can be compressed or optionally combined uncompressed. As a special feature, the format allows the addition of several “generations” of the same file, which can be managed automatically but also extracted individually. The files can be individually commented, marked as deleted and restored. The maximum file size of both the archived files and the archive is 4  GiB . The division of large files into several archives is not intended. The reference implementation comes with additional, separate tools:

fiz
an analysis tool for recovering data from damaged zoo archives
sez
(self-extracting Zoo utility) for creating self-extracting archives for (MS-) DOS

history

The format was developed by Rahul Dhesi, who first published the associated software in the Usenet group comp.sources.misc in the mid-1980s . In 1991 the development with version 2.1 was stopped in favor of other packing programs.

The format was most widespread on OpenVMS systems and for a while on Commodore's Amiga .

Currently (as of 2020) Zoo is only maintained by individual Linux distributions (primarily Debian).

Availability

The reference implementation has been made available for numerous Unix-like and DOS operating systems. It has now been disclosed in the source code and the last version has been handed over to the public domain . The format is still supported today by a number of current packing programs such as ALZip , WinAce , TUGZip , The Unarchiver, Filzip and PowerArchiver as well as the standard tools of the large Linux work environments ( File Roller , Ark ). The reference implementation or an unpacker can be installed directly from the standard package sources in most popular Linux distributions .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Manpage for Zoo 2.1 (English).
  2. ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: packages.debian.org@1@ 2Template: dead link / packages.debian.org
  3. ↑ packages.ubuntu.com
  4. ↑ software.opensuse.org
  5. ↑ apps.fedoraproject.org