2 ms·
.zip has the table of contents at the end of the file; .rar has it at the front, so if you've downloaded 50% of a .rar file you can easily get 50% of the conten
by archangel_one 14y ago
.zip has the table of contents at the end of the file; .rar has it at the front, so if you've downloaded 50% of a .rar file you can easily get 50% of the content. You can't easily extract a zip file until you've downloaded the entire thing. So if downloading over a slow compression, which does still happen depressingly often, .rar does have a significant advantage over zip at least.
- adamzochowski 14y agoZIP contains full listing at the end of the file. Saying this, ZIP also prefixes file data with file header information, allowing to decompress partial zips. ZIP recovery software will use this to recover broken zips.