There is open source support for RAR in unar: https://theunarchiver.com/command-line
I've encountered RAR files unar cannot open. It seems there are several versions of the RAR format, and unar only understands the older ones.
Don't Use RAR
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Re: Don't Use RAR
#92All things considered, there are no reasons left to use RAR. I sometimes run into RAR files that 7zip thinks are corrupt but WinRAR opens just fine. That by itself means I keep it installed. It doesn't hurt that the GUI is more pleasant.
I believe "us[ing] RAR" here means the creation of new RAR files. In fact your experience strikes me as another reason to actively avoid RAR; there is no guarantee that your RAR archive can be decompressed with third-party softwares other than WinRAR itself.
Re: Don't Use RAR
#93I’m not fully convinced of my own position here, but I have long suspected that “zipping” at all is an abstraction that shouldn’t really be exposed to the user. Like it’s a throwback to an earlier era. The basic trade off is size for speed, and it seems like most cases it could handled automatically at the level of the file system maybe. Like if I have a big file that I want to send, it sort of feels like the softwar…
> Why can’t folders be automatically treated like singular archives when I try to do operations on them for which that makes sense? Why do I have to think about these details?
Operating systems do blur the boundaries of this a bit, now -- you can explore zip files as if they were folders, mount disk images from files, and you can work with folders as bundles (e.g. a macOS application is a disguised bundle, an RTFD document is a directory with contents etc.)
Some applications (like mail apps) have always done a good job of handling (combining, compressing) folders so they can be moved/sent as files.
The problem is all of these application things are probably best done at a GUI level. At a filesystem/command line level you want the distinction to be explicit.
Of course a few OSes ditch the distinction entirely and concern themselves only with objects -- OS/400 for example. Which might be closer to the world you are imagining.
Re: Don't Use RAR
#94RAR is a full-blown backup format* while 7zip is "just" an archive format. So comparisons are somewhat mood. But even I as a RAR fan and license holder have to agree. For the average joe, sending email attachments, zip or 7z is enough. * It can safe all three file timestamps (From nanoseconds precision (with NTFS), down to only 2 seconds precision (if you want to shave of a view bytes)), ACLs, ADS, Hard and Soft Link…
Yeah I use RAR daily and I have no interest in using a tool made by companies who exist to collect data and use it to serve you ads.
I’d rather pay $29 for a lifetime license than have any chance at giving more data about me to Google or Facebook.
Re: Don't Use RAR
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
to me it goes back to Doom days
Nah, it was all about .arj then.
.ace and WinAce -- which died out fast, and eventually had a nasty security bug in unacev2.dll that caused it to be removed from most 3rd party utilities.
Re: Don't Use RAR
#96Does 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?
>>Does anyone know why RAR is better compression-wise than the two more modern standards?
Because RAR was original compression algorith(I suspect - collection of different algorithms that are applied for different cases) and those two others are based on ONE generic algorithm, which is dumb.
>>It doesn't seem like it's been updated in a long time
Because rar is perfect and what I need. I'm still using RAR files - not interested in 7z and have no idea what is the other standard mentioned. RAR has recovery record, that 7z lacks - when you have archives, that are decades old and moved from one HDD to another, where HDDs develop faults and you need to recover files - that suddently makes difference why rar is still better than 7z, when your files are corrupted in 7z - they are gone.
WINRAR License is least concern for me, because when WinRAR was created, there were different times, when there was an idea, that auhor(and maintainer) should have all the legal rights to his work(and that also includes compensation) - not some company, that is employing talents. Also idea, that your work should be free to everyone was wild idea, when software developers had to pay all the bills and eat as well. Also, closed propiertary sources were historically better for security.
RAR comes from times, when zip was dominating(and it was bad archive) - rar was better at compression than zip and it was quicker to compress and it was also supported on Linux. I have no idea what is 7z doing nowadays, but when it was developed first, it was improving zip, which nobody liked at that time. Also, 7z even nowadays havce some limitations, which requires workarounds, which is time consuming in archive creation. Anyway, none of those arguments for not using RAR seems good enough for me in especially on non open source Windows environment. The only reason for me to stop using RAR would be if Windows had access to RAR (open) source.
Re: Don't Use RAR
#97RAR is a full-blown backup format* while 7zip is "just" an archive format. So comparisons are somewhat mood. But even I as a RAR fan and license holder have to agree. For the average joe, sending email attachments, zip or 7z is enough. * It can safe all three file timestamps (From nanoseconds precision (with NTFS), down to only 2 seconds precision (if you want to shave of a view bytes)), ACLs, ADS, Hard and Soft Link…
Yeah I use RAR daily and I have no interest in using a tool made by companies who exist to collect data and use it to serve you ads. I’d rather pay $29 for a lifetime license than have any chance at giving more data about me to Google or Facebook.
I'm not sure what you're talking about.
The major tool promoted in the article is 7Zip which is not made by either Google or Facebook, costs $0, and doesn't contain ads or collect data.
The two tools which are made by Google or Facebook are command line utilities which also don't contain ads.
Re: Don't Use RAR
#98I strongly prefer WinRAR (the software) because it does everything I am looking for in an archiving and compressing software. - It is a great tool for archiving. Especially in Windows, it is often faster to compress a rar archive than copying several hundreds of files. This fills the lack of a `tar` tool in Windows space. - It supports changing the compression level during the compression. - Highly backwards compatib…
Most of these, if no all, is covered by 7-zip.
7z does not offer archive recovery. This has saved my archived data couple of times, which would be gone, if I was using 7z.
Re: Don't Use RAR
#99Good 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.
You won't be able to do that with RAR files either. The only archive/compression format that you can send anyone is ZIP, since both Windows and macOS can open them ootb.
I wouldn't send a RAR to my grandparents, but if I had to send pictures for a school reunion I would expect everyone to either know how to open a RAR or to be able to figure it out. Worst case they will google rar and will find WinRAR as the first result.
For zstd or brotli I can't even name a GUI program able to open them outside a somewhat obscure 7zip fork.
Re: Don't Use RAR
#100If you have half decent internet connection, Compressing and Decompressing the files is going to take more time than simply just sending it or downloading it.
I still remember we use to compare compression tools and format on compression ratio. But I cant record the last time I care about any of these any more. If it needs to compress just use zip. The same happened to Audio Codec as well.
Video Codec is where we still have lots of work.
And it is sort of strange RAR comes up, something we used to use everyday and is now for most people completely forgotten.