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Don't Use RAR

group.miletic.net

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Re: Don't Use RAR

#61

Post by noAnswer »

wyattpeak wrote: post #43

Does anyone know why RAR is better compression-wise than the two more modern standards? It doesn't seem like it's been updated in a long time, and I would have expected modern software from two of the best houses in the world to handily beat it. Is it that good, or is it a matter of priorities, or something else?

> It doesn't seem like it's been updated in a long time

It is actively maintained. https://www.rarlab.com/rarnew.htm A view years ago, with rar5, it got a modernised file-format.

Re: Don't Use RAR

#62

Post by vetinari »

david_draco wrote: post #6

This is conflating archive format with compression algorithm. The very broad statement "7-Zip achieves a better compression ratio, but it is much slower to compress than RAR" should be demonstrated over all compression levels with a curve of compression-ratio vs time. I am skeptical RAR cannot be outperformed by 7zip in at least some situations. The license is the strongest argument to not use RAR.

7-zip is single-threaded (by default; there are switches you can play with and -mt is not enough), which means, that you are waiting for your stuff to compress, while simultaneously most of your cores are idle.

I don't know what winrar uses, I don't use it; but this is my annoyance with 7zip.

Re: Don't Use RAR

#63

Post by xattt »

wyattpeak wrote: post #43

Does anyone know why RAR is better compression-wise than the two more modern standards? It doesn't seem like it's been updated in a long time, and I would have expected modern software from two of the best houses in the world to handily beat it. Is it that good, or is it a matter of priorities, or something else?

UHARC is more efficient than any of them, but no one uses it.

Re: Don't Use RAR

#64

Post by vetinari »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #42
ihateolives wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The license is the strongest argument to not use RAR. Why? Most of the daily tools that keep business world running are closed source. Excel. Or Photoshop. Or Windows/MacOS itself. But RAR license and not being open source is now pushing it too far? Really?

Its okay to have some business spesific software be closed source, say Excell. But an archive is needed every time you download a collection of files from a government website, or make GDPR request for your data to google. So by choosing RAR you would be forcing millions of people, maybe entire country to use that company's product and giving them power. Is there any good reason for that?

And what's the difference compared to forcing docx/xlsx or psd? The network effects affect every exchange, not just archives.

Re: Don't Use RAR

#65

Post by vetinari »

vbezhenar wrote: post #20
rcarmo wrote: post #14

There was a time when RAR was extremely popular because it dealt very well with splitting things across multiple diskette-sized archives, and because it edged out PKZIP in compression. Regardless of its origins and... "traditional" use, these days it has zero relevance given that Windows and MacOS (as well as some Linux file managers) allow you to handle zip files without any additional software - and also because ma…

Mail servers still have restriction on attachment size. RAR is the most convenient way in this situation.

Also, when mail scanners became too nosy, it was convenient that rar could encrypt metadata, so the archive could not be scanned.

It lasted only for a while. Gmail drops such files entirely for the last few years.

Re: Don't Use RAR

#66

Post by daneel_w »

tropin wrote: post #23
anonu wrote: post #11

The sightly better file compression with rar is still interesting. But I suppose with today's compute when you think about the time vs space trade-off, time is more important. Space is cheap.

Is not just "slightly better" in some cases. An obvious one is repeated files. If RAR encounters a file ten times, it will compress once and store it and nine pointers. lzma and zstd guis i've tested will store ten compressed copies. It happens all the time in backups.

> "lzma and zstd guis i've tested will store ten compressed copies"

It depends on dictionary size, word size, the actual data etc.

Re: Don't Use RAR

#67

Post by crispyambulance »

I've used winRAR for a long time because of the "self-extracting executable" feature. You can set it up to create an exe (instead of a rar) that extracts files to a particular location and then runs arbitrary commands. It's like a super simple ghetto-fabulous installer and it just works.

Now I wonder what else can do that as easily in a windows environment? I haven't looked around because I haven't needed to but now I am curious. And yes, the winRAR UI is getting a bit long in the tooth.

Re: Don't Use RAR

#69

Post by ramraj07 »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #60
mikl wrote: post #44

Good luck trying to send a file compressed with Zstd or Brotli to people and have them know what to do with them. I’d certainly have to google to figure out how to open one of those. And I’m an engineer and aware that those formats exist.

Zstandard and Brotli are also not an archiving format, which the layperson normally expects to be a "compression" format, so the comparison is a bit off. But that doesn't really matter because there is 7-zip which is an archiving format AND compression format AND competitive to RAR AND open-source.

But slower.
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