Files with rar extension are compressed archives made using any of the RAR or WinRAR compression utilities. Along with ZIP format, RAR format is one of the most common formats used and as such can be extracted by almost every archiving tool.
- RAR (Roshal Archive) is a proprietary archive files format that has been around since 1993. It is named after Eugene Roshal, a Russian software engineer. Windows does not support RAR files by default, which means they can only be created and opened by third-party software. The following tools help you deal with RAR files in Windows.
- Looking for online definition of RAR or what RAR stands for? RAR is listed in the World's largest and most authoritative dictionary database of abbreviations and acronyms The Free Dictionary.
- RAR Compressed Archive Files that use the.rar file extension are archive files that have been created by the WinRAR file archiving software. The WinRAR application takes large files or collections of files and compresses those files into a single archive file.
Jan 09, 2020 A RAR file can be recognized by the.rar file extension, but that's not the only file extension used by RAR. You may also come across.rev,.r01,.r02,.r03, and so on. REV is used for recovery volume sets, which help to repair a damaged RAR archive in case of physical data damage. The sequence of.rXX file extensions is used for multipart.
There is one other file type using
the RAR file extension!
.rar - Java JCA Resource Adapter module
Software that open rar file
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RAR file extension- WinRAR RAR compressed archive
What is rar file? How to open rar files?
File type specification:
rar file icon:
File extension rar is most likely best known for for its use for a compressed archive format created by RAR as well as it's successor WinRAR file archiver.
The original program was available for MS-DOS only, but the never versions are available for every version of Windows and even for some other platforms, such as Linux or Mac.
Similar to other compressed file archive formats, .rar files are data containers, that store one or several files and folders in compressed form. Compressed data can be in one single file or multiple splitted files (eg. archive.rar, archvie.r01,archive.r02 etc.).
In WinRAR you can split a huge archive to a few smaller files, which are called volumes. If you need to unpack rar multi-volumes, place all them to the same folder and start extraction from the first volume.
RAR archives can be also password protected.
MIME types used for WinRar rar archives:
application/rar
application/x-rar-compressed
Updated: September 4, 2020
The default software associated to open rar file:
Company or developer:
win.rar GmbH
A file compression and archive utility. Along with WinZip and 7-Zip is one of the most common compression programs for Windows. Its native format is as the name implies RAR and uses rar file extension.
WinRAR is a powerful archive manager. It can backup your data and reduce the size of email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format.
WinRAR is also able to unpack CAB, ARJ, LZH, TAR, GZ, ACE, UUE, BZ2, JAR, ISO, 7Z, Z archives. Backup files from disk utility. It consistently makes smaller archives than the competition, saving disk space and transmission costs. WinRAR offers a graphic interactive interface utilizing mouse and menus as well as the command line interface.
Company or developer:
win.rar GmbH
RAR for Mac is command line tool used to create and extract RAR archives.
Company or developer:
win.rar GmbH
Rar for Linux is command line utility used to create and extract RAR archives.
Related articles:
Help how to open:
Most modern file archivers support the RAR format on all operating systems. The default program for RAR archive format is the WinRAR or RAR for Mac.
How to convert:
You can extract *.rar archives and repack RAR format to different archive format simply by extracting the contents of the archive and compressing them after to different format.
Find conversions from rar file:
Find converter to rar file type:
File identification strings:
HEX code: 52 61 72 21 1A 07 00
ASCII code: Rar!
List of software applications associated to the .rar file extension
Recommended software programs are sorted by OS platform (Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android etc.)
and possible program actions that can be done with the file: like open rar file, edit rar file, convert rar file, view rar file, play rar file etc. (if exist software for corresponding action in File-Extensions.org's database).
Hint:
Click on the tab below to simply browse between the application actions, to quickly get a list of recommended software, which is able to perform the specified software action, such as opening, editing or converting rar files.
Software that open rar file - WinRAR RAR compressed archive
Programs supporting the exension rar on the main platforms Windows, Mac, Linux or mobile. Click on the link to get more information about listed programs for open rar file action.
Microsoft Windows:
Main software associated with rar file by default:
WinRAR
Other suggested software:
7-zip
WinZip
B1 Free Archiver
ALZip
PeaZip
IZArc
FilZip
Apple macOS / Mac OS X:
Main software associated with rar file by default:
RAR for Mac
Other suggested software:
sArchiver
StuffIt Expander for Mac
The Unarchiver
ALZip for Mac
Decompressor
Linux/Unix:
Main software associated with rar file by default:
RAR for Linux
Other suggested software:
Xarchiver
Apple iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch devices):
Google Android:
What Does Rar File Extension Mean Google
This guide describes the use of the WinRAR command-line tools (v5.01) for compressing and uncompressing files in a directory and their use in batch files (for IZArc and 7-zip, see this post). This guide is an extension of a previous post, Automate Zipping Tasks using the Command-line Interface that explained the use of the command-line tools for two free compression utilities, IZArc and 7-Zip. The information in this guide was tested on a Windows PC running Vista.
WinRAR is a popular and powerful archive manager that can be used from the command-line or with scripting languages such as batch files. It includes two command-line tools, rar.exe and unrar.exe, where rar.exe compresses and unrar.exe uncompresses files. Both are located in the 'C:Program FilesWinRAR' folder in the installable version. Although WinRAR is shareware, it can be used on a trial basis for 40 days. Using WinRAR's command-line tools is similar to those for IZArc and 7-Zip. The syntax for using the WinRAR executables is:
To get a listing of the options for the rar and unrar commands, open a command window, cd to the WinRAR directory, and type rar or unrar and then press enter (rar /? or rar help may also be used, use rar >rar_cmds.txt or unrar >unrar_cmds.txt to print the command options to a file). For more detailed information, open the rar.txt file in the WinRAR directory which contains the RAR console version user's manual.
Examples to compress a folder:
creates archive yourfiles.rar and compresses all .txt files in the current folder
creates archive yourfiles.rar in C:yourfolder and compresses all .txt files in the current folder and its subfolders
creates archive yourfiles.rar in C:yourfolder and compresses all .txt files in otherfolder and its subfolders
creates archive yourfiles.rar and compresses all files in the current folder, but doesn't include subfolders (note lack of extension; WinRAR will use the default extension .rar)
'a' command. Adds to the archive
'-r' switch. Recurses subfolders
Examples to uncompress a folder:
extracts all *.gif files from yourfile.rar to c:extractfolder (trailing backslash required) and restores the folder structure
What Does Rar File Extension Mean Google
extracts all files in c:yourfile.rar to the current folder (folder structure ignored)
'x' command. Extracts with full paths
'e' command. Extracts and ignores paths
Compression example using Multiple Switches:
compresses all new or updated files from c:test and its subfolders to e_archive.rar, deletes the files after they are added to the archive, and excludes any files with a 'bat' extension,
'a' command adds to the archive
'-r' switch. Recurses subfolders
'-ep' switch. Adds files to the archive without including the path information. Multiple can exist in the archive with the same name.
'-u' switch. Equivalent to the 'u' command when combined with the 'a' command. Adds new files and updates older versions of the files already in the archive
'-df' switch. Deletes files after they are moved to the archive
'-x' switch. Excludes the specified file(s) from the operation
Basic rules for WinRAR:
- When files or listfiles are not specified, all files in the current folder are processed
- When specifying all files in a folder, yourfolder or yourfolder*.* are equivalent
- Folder structures are automatically saved in archives (but not automatically extracted)
- WinRAR uses the .rar extension by default, but that can be overridden by specifying the zip extension in the archive name
- Switches and commands are not case sensitive and can be written in either upper or lower case
Another point is that WinRAR doesn't appear to install to the Windows path environment variable, so it must be specified either at a command prompt, set permanently in the environment variable settings, or specified in a batch file (WinRAR v3.71.0.0 was used for this guide and that may not be the case for all versions).
To set the Windows path environment variable temporarily at a command prompt or in a batch file, use the following command:
To set it permanently in the Windows path for your PC:
start–>Control Panel–>System–>Advanced system settings–>Advanced Tab–>Environment Variables–>System Variables–>Path–>Edit. Add the path ;C:Program FilesWinRAR; to the end (don't forget the single semicolons at the beginning and end). Hit OK three times.
Using WinRAR in Batch Files:
Two batch file examples are provided below, The uncompress_rar.bat file decompresses all .rar files from a folder and places the extracted files into another directory.
The compress_rar_rev2.bat file provides the following compression options for a user specified directory. Option 4 is the most commonly used structure and the most appropriate option in most cases:
- Compress files in dir individually (no subdirs)
- Compress files in dir and subdirs individually – no paths
- Compress all files in dir into a single archive (no subdirs)
- Compress all files in dir and subdirs into a single archive
- Compress all files in dir and subdirs into a single archive – no paths
Be sure to change the extension(s) to .bat before using either file and edit the folder paths as required. Both of the following batch files temporarily set the Windows path environment variable for the WinRAR application folder when executed.
Batch file downloads:
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