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Computer Programming Software Terms, Glossary and Dictionary
RAR: Roshal Archive
In computing, RAR, short of Roshal ARchive, is a proprietary file format for data compression and archiving, which was developed by Eugene Roshal (hence the name RAR: Roshal ARchive). He also developed programs for packing and unpacking RAR files, originally for DOS, and later ported to other platforms. The encoder (the main Windows version known as WinRAR) is distributed as shareware, but Roshal has released the decoder's source code under a license that allows free distribution and modification, on condition that it is not used to build a compatible encoder. The encoding method is held to be proprietary, but compatible programs for decompression are available for several platforms, such as the open-source 7-Zip.
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