PeaZip
Encyclopedia
PeaZip is a file manager
and file archiver
for Microsoft Windows
and GNU
/Linux
. It supports its native PEA archive format (featuring compression, multi volume split and flexible authenticated encryption and integrity check schemes) and other mainstream formats, with special focus on handling open format
s. It supports 134 file extensions (Version 4.2).
PeaZip is mainly written in Free Pascal
, using Lazarus
. PeaZip is released under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License
.
PeaZip allows users to run extracting and archiving operations automatically using command-line generated exporting the job defined in the GUI front-end. It can also create, edit and restore an archive's layout for speeding up archiving or backup operation's definition.
Other notable features of the program includes archive conversion, file splitting and joining, secure file deletion, byte-to-byte file comparison, archive encryption, checksum/hash files, find duplicate files, system benchmarking, random passwords/keyfiles generation, view image thumbnails (multi threaded
on the fly thumbnails generation without saving image cache to the host machine), and integration in the Windows Explorer
context menu
. In addition, the program's user interface (including icons and color scheme) can be customized.
PeaZip is available for x86 and x86-64 as installable package for Windows and Linux (DEB, RPM and TGZ, compiled both for GTK2 and Qt
widgetset), and as natively standalone, portable application for both Windows and Linux. In the latter form it is available also as PortableApps package (.paf.exe).
Along with more popular and general-purpose archive formats like 7z
, Tar
, ZIP
etc., PeaZip supports the PAQ
and LPAQ formats. Although usually not recommended for general purpose use (due to high memory usage and low speed), those formats are included for the value as cutting edge compression technology, providing compression ratio amongst the best for most data structures.
PeaZip supports encryption with AES
256-bit cipher
in 7z, ZIP and PEA archive formats. In FreeArc
's ARC format, supported ciphers are AES 256-bit, Blowfish
, Twofish
256 and Serpent
256.
If it is critical to follow the real time progress of the work it is possible to set the program to use the native console interface, or both graphical and console interfaces, for the backend utilities.
, defining three different levels of communication to control: streams, objects
, and volumes
.
It was developed in conjunction with the PeaZip file archiver. PeaZip and Universal Extractor support the PEA archive format.
Most of these utilities can run both in console mode or through a graphical wrapper that allows more user-friendly handling of output information.
, which is part of Google Ventures
), and alternatively as a plain installer version with no third party bundle.
PeaZip Portable and PeaZip for Linux packages do not feature any third party bundle, and alongside PeaZip plain installer are suitable for environments requiring exclusively software released under OSI approved licenses.
File manager
A file manager or file browser is a computer program that provides a user interface to work with file systems. The most common operations performed on files or groups of files are: create, open, edit, view, print, play, rename, move, copy, delete, search/find, and modify file attributes, properties...
and file archiver
File archiver
A file archiver is a computer program that combines a number of files together into one archive file, or a series of archive files, for easier transportation or storage...
for Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
and GNU
GNU
GNU is a Unix-like computer operating system developed by the GNU project, ultimately aiming to be a "complete Unix-compatible software system"...
/Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
. It supports its native PEA archive format (featuring compression, multi volume split and flexible authenticated encryption and integrity check schemes) and other mainstream formats, with special focus on handling open format
Open format
An open file format is a published specification for storing digital data, usually maintained by a standards organization, which can therefore be used and implemented by anyone. For example, an open format can be implementable by both proprietary and free and open source software, using the typical...
s. It supports 134 file extensions (Version 4.2).
PeaZip is mainly written in Free Pascal
Free Pascal
Free Pascal Compiler is a free Pascal and Object Pascal compiler.In addition to its own Object Pascal dialect, Free Pascal supports, to varying degrees, the dialects of several other compilers, including those of Turbo Pascal, Delphi, and some historical Macintosh compilers...
, using Lazarus
Lazarus (software)
Lazarus is a free cross-platform IDE which provides a Delphi-like development experience for Pascal and Object Pascal developers. It is developed for, and supported by, the Free Pascal compiler. Since early 2008, Lazarus has been available for Microsoft Windows, several Linux distributions,...
. PeaZip is released under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License
GNU Lesser General Public License
The GNU Lesser General Public License or LGPL is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation . It was designed as a compromise between the strong-copyleft GNU General Public License or GPL and permissive licenses such as the BSD licenses and the MIT License...
.
Features
The program features an archive browser interface with search and history features for intuitive navigation in archive's content, and allows the application of fine-grained multiple exclusion and inclusion filter rules to the archive; a flat browsing mode is possible as alternative archive browsing method.PeaZip allows users to run extracting and archiving operations automatically using command-line generated exporting the job defined in the GUI front-end. It can also create, edit and restore an archive's layout for speeding up archiving or backup operation's definition.
Other notable features of the program includes archive conversion, file splitting and joining, secure file deletion, byte-to-byte file comparison, archive encryption, checksum/hash files, find duplicate files, system benchmarking, random passwords/keyfiles generation, view image thumbnails (multi threaded
Thread (computer science)
In computer science, a thread of execution is the smallest unit of processing that can be scheduled by an operating system. The implementation of threads and processes differs from one operating system to another, but in most cases, a thread is contained inside a process...
on the fly thumbnails generation without saving image cache to the host machine), and integration in the Windows Explorer
Windows Explorer
This article is about the Windows file system browser. For the similarly named web browser, see Internet ExplorerWindows Explorer is a file manager application that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user interface...
context menu
Context menu
A context menu is a menu in a graphical user interface that appears upon user interaction, such as a right mouse click or middle click mouse operation...
. In addition, the program's user interface (including icons and color scheme) can be customized.
PeaZip is available for x86 and x86-64 as installable package for Windows and Linux (DEB, RPM and TGZ, compiled both for GTK2 and Qt
Qt (toolkit)
Qt is a cross-platform application framework that is widely used for developing application software with a graphical user interface , and also used for developing non-GUI programs such as command-line tools and consoles for servers...
widgetset), and as natively standalone, portable application for both Windows and Linux. In the latter form it is available also as PortableApps package (.paf.exe).
Along with more popular and general-purpose archive formats like 7z
7z
7z is a compressed archive file format that supports several different data compression, encryption and pre-processing algorithms. The 7z format initially appeared as implemented by the 7-Zip archiver. The 7-Zip program is publicly available under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public...
, Tar
Tar (file format)
In computing, tar is both a file format and the name of a program used to handle such files...
, ZIP
ZIP (file format)
Zip is a file format used for data compression and archiving. A zip file contains one or more files that have been compressed, to reduce file size, or stored as is...
etc., PeaZip supports the PAQ
PAQ
PAQ is a series of lossless data compression archivers that have evolved through collaborative development to top rankings on several benchmarks measuring compression ratio . Specialized versions of PAQ have won the Hutter Prize and the Calgary Challenge...
and LPAQ formats. Although usually not recommended for general purpose use (due to high memory usage and low speed), those formats are included for the value as cutting edge compression technology, providing compression ratio amongst the best for most data structures.
PeaZip supports encryption with AES
Advanced Encryption Standard
Advanced Encryption Standard is a specification for the encryption of electronic data. It has been adopted by the U.S. government and is now used worldwide. It supersedes DES...
256-bit cipher
Block cipher
In cryptography, a block cipher is a symmetric key cipher operating on fixed-length groups of bits, called blocks, with an unvarying transformation. A block cipher encryption algorithm might take a 128-bit block of plaintext as input, and output a corresponding 128-bit block of ciphertext...
in 7z, ZIP and PEA archive formats. In FreeArc
FreeArc
FreeArc is a free and open source file archiver developed by Bulat Ziganshin.-Algorithms:FreeArc uses LZMA, PPMD, TrueAudio, Tornado and GRzip algorithms with automatic switching by file type, and also uses set of filters—for instance it can remove repetitions from text.-Archive size:In Tom's...
's ARC format, supported ciphers are AES 256-bit, Blowfish
Blowfish (cipher)
Blowfish is a keyed, symmetric block cipher, designed in 1993 by Bruce Schneier and included in a large number of cipher suites and encryption products. Blowfish provides a good encryption rate in software and no effective cryptanalysis of it has been found to date...
, Twofish
Twofish
In cryptography, Twofish is a symmetric key block cipher with a block size of 128 bits and key sizes up to 256 bits. It was one of the five finalists of the Advanced Encryption Standard contest, but was not selected for standardisation...
256 and Serpent
Serpent (cipher)
Serpent is a symmetric key block cipher which was a finalist in the Advanced Encryption Standard contest, where it came second to Rijndael. Serpent was designed by Ross Anderson, Eli Biham, and Lars Knudsen....
256.
Limitations
The graphical frontend's progress bar is less reliable than the native console's progress indicator for the various backend utilities.If it is critical to follow the real time progress of the work it is possible to set the program to use the native console interface, or both graphical and console interfaces, for the backend utilities.
Native archive format
PEA, an abbreviation for Pack Encrypt Authenticate, is an archive file format. It is a general purpose archiving format featuring compression and multiple volume output. The developers' goal is to offer a flexible security model through Authenticated Encryption, that provides both privacy and authentication of the data, and redundant integrity checks ranging from checksums to cryptographically strong hashesHash function
A hash function is any algorithm or subroutine that maps large data sets to smaller data sets, called keys. For example, a single integer can serve as an index to an array...
, defining three different levels of communication to control: streams, objects
Object (computer science)
In computer science, an object is any entity that can be manipulated by the commands of a programming language, such as a value, variable, function, or data structure...
, and volumes
Volume (compression)
A volume is a term in data compression for a file that has been compressed and split into different parts.There are many advantages in having a compression utility with the ability for compression into volumes. First, it allows an individual to download the file in segments at his or her own pace...
.
It was developed in conjunction with the PeaZip file archiver. PeaZip and Universal Extractor support the PEA archive format.
Third-party technologies
PeaZip acts as a graphical front-end for numerous third-party open source or royalty-free utilities, including:- Igor Pavlov's 7z7-Zip7-Zip is an open source file archiver. 7-Zip operates with the 7z archive format, but can read and write several other archive formats. The program can be used from a command line interface, graphical user interface, or with Microsoft Windows shell integration. 7-Zip began in 1999 and is actively...
executable and Myspace's POSIX port of 7z under Linux - Bulat Ziganshin's FreeArcFreeArcFreeArc is a free and open source file archiver developed by Bulat Ziganshin.-Algorithms:FreeArc uses LZMA, PPMD, TrueAudio, Tornado and GRzip algorithms with automatic switching by file type, and also uses set of filters—for instance it can remove repetitions from text.-Archive size:In Tom's...
archiver (to not be confused with SEA's ARC) - PAQPAQPAQ is a series of lossless data compression archivers that have evolved through collaborative development to top rankings on several benchmarks measuring compression ratio . Specialized versions of PAQ have won the Hutter Prize and the Calgary Challenge...
8, ZPAQ and LPAQ executables, maintained by Matt Mahoney and various contributors - Ilia Muraviev's QUADQUAD (compressor)QUAD is a high-performance data compressor based on the LZ algorithms . It's designed to produce small files but still decompress fast and with little memory. QUAD is licensed under the LGPL....
and BALZ compressors - GNU strip and UPXUPXUPX, the Ultimate Packer for eXecutables, is a free and open source executable packer supporting a number of file formats from different operating systems.- Compression :...
- UNACEV2.DLL 2.6.0.0 (royalty-free UNACEV2.DLL license) and UNACE for Linux (royalty-free UNACE for Linux license) (maintained by Marcel Lemke, ACE Compression Software)
Most of these utilities can run both in console mode or through a graphical wrapper that allows more user-friendly handling of output information.
Full archiving and extraction support
- 7z7z7z is a compressed archive file format that supports several different data compression, encryption and pre-processing algorithms. The 7z format initially appeared as implemented by the 7-Zip archiver. The 7-Zip program is publicly available under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public...
- 7z-SFXSelf-extracting archiveA self-extracting archive is a computer application which contains a file archive, as well as programming to extract this information. Such file archives do not require a second executable file or program to extract from the archive, as archive files usually require...
- FreeArcFreeArcFreeArc is a free and open source file archiver developed by Bulat Ziganshin.-Algorithms:FreeArc uses LZMA, PPMD, TrueAudio, Tornado and GRzip algorithms with automatic switching by file type, and also uses set of filters—for instance it can remove repetitions from text.-Archive size:In Tom's...
's ARC/WRC - bzip2Bzip2bzip2 is a free and open source implementation of the Burrows–Wheeler algorithm. It is developed and maintained by Julian Seward. Seward made the first public release of bzip2, version 0.15, in July 1996.-Compression efficiency:...
: bz2, tar.bz2, tbz, tb2 - gzipGzipGzip is any of several software applications used for file compression and decompression. The term usually refers to the GNU Project's implementation, "gzip" standing for GNU zip. It is based on the DEFLATE algorithm, which is a combination of Lempel-Ziv and Huffman coding...
: gz, tar.gz, tgz - PAQPAQPAQ is a series of lossless data compression archivers that have evolved through collaborative development to top rankings on several benchmarks measuring compression ratio . Specialized versions of PAQ have won the Hutter Prize and the Calgary Challenge...
8F/JD/L/O, LPAQ, ZPAQ - PEA
- QUAD/BALZ
- split (.001)
- tarTar (file format)In computing, tar is both a file format and the name of a program used to handle such files...
- WIM
- XZXzxz is a lossless data compression file format incorporating the LZMA2 compression algorithm. Like gzip and bzip2, concatenation is supported to compress multiple files, but the convention is to bundle a file that is an archive itself, such as those created by the tar or cpio Unix...
- ZIPZIP (file format)Zip is a file format used for data compression and archiving. A zip file contains one or more files that have been compressed, to reduce file size, or stored as is...
Browse/test/extract support
- ACEACE (file format)In computing, ACE is a proprietary data compression archive file format developed by Marcel Lemke, and later bought by e-merge GmbH. The peak of its popularity was 1999—2001, when it provided slightly better compression rates than RAR, which has since become more popular.-WinAce:WinAce, maintained...
- ARJARJARJ is a software tool designed by Robert K. Jung for creating high-efficiency compressed file archives. ARJ is currently on version 2.85 for DOS and 3.15 for Windows and supports 16-bit and 32-bit Intel architectures.ARJ was one of two mainstream archivers for DOS and Windows during early and...
- CAB
- CHMMicrosoft Compressed HTML HelpMicrosoft Compiled HTML Help is a Microsoft proprietary online help format. It was introduced as the successor to Microsoft WinHelp with the release of Windows 98, and is still supported in Windows 7.-History:...
- Compound File (MSI, DOC, PPT, XLS, etc.)
- CPIOCpiocpio is a general file archiver utility and its associated file format. It is primarily installed on Unix-like computer operating systems. The software utility was originally intended as a tape archiving program as part of the Programmer's Workbench , and has been a component of virtually every...
- DEBDeb (file format)deb is the extension of the Debian software package format and the most often used name for such binary packages. Like the "Deb" part of the term Debian, it originates from the name of Debra, erstwhile girlfriend and now ex-wife of Debian's founder Ian Murdock.Debian packages are also used in...
- EAREAR (file format)EAR is a file format used by Java EE for packaging one or more modules into a single archive so that the deployment of the various modules onto an application server happens simultaneously and coherently...
- ISOISO imageAn ISO image is an archive file of an optical disc, composed of the data contents of every written sector of an optical disc, including the optical disc file system...
CD/DVD images - JARJAR (file format)In software, JAR is an archive file format typically used to aggregate many Java class files and associated metadata and resources into one file to distribute application software or libraries on the Java platform.JAR files are built on the ZIP file format and have the .jar file extension...
- LZMALZMAThe Lempel–Ziv–Markov chain algorithm is an algorithm used to perform data compression. It has been under development since 1998 and was first used in the 7z format of the 7-Zip archiver...
- LZH
- NSISNullsoft Scriptable Install SystemNullsoft Scriptable Install System is a script-driven Windows installation system with minimal overhead backed by Nullsoft, the creators of Winamp...
installers - OpenOffice's OpenDocumentOpenDocumentThe Open Document Format for Office Applications is an XML-based file format for representing electronic documents such as spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents....
file types - PET/PUP (Puppy Linux installers)
- PAK/PK3PK3 (file extension)A .PK3 file is a renamed ZIP file, used in games based on the Quake III engine. It usually contains a checksum to prevent the opening and recompression of the file, or the addition of extra maps to demo versions...
/PK4PK4 (file extension)The PK4 file format is a .zip file identical to the PK3 file format. It has been used in Doom 3, Quake 4 and other games using the id Tech 4 game engine to store levels and other game files.... - RARRAR (file format)RAR stands for Roshal ARchive. It is a proprietary archive file format that supports data compression, error recovery, and file spanning...
- RPMRPM Package ManagerRPM Package Manager is a package management system. The name RPM variously refers to the .rpm file format, files in this format, software packaged in such files, and the package manager itself...
- SMZIP
- U3U3U3 was a joint venture between SanDisk and M-Systems , producing a proprietary method of launching Windows applications from special USB flash drives. Flash drives adhering to the U3 specification are termed "U3 smart drives"....
P - WAR
- WIM
- XPI
- Z (compress)CompressCompress is a UNIX compression program based on the LZC compression method, which is an LZW implementation using variable size pointers as in LZ78.- Description of program :Files compressed by compress are typically given the extension .Z...
- ZIPX
Software advertising
As of 3.7, PeaZip installer for Windows is available either as a version showing advertising during installation process (in partnership with OpenCandyOpenCandy
OpenCandy is a company based in San Diego that produces an advertising software module consisting of a Microsoft Windows library that can be incorporated in a Windows installer...
, which is part of Google Ventures
Google Ventures
Google Ventures is the venture capital investment arm of Google Inc. that makes financially driven investments in technology companies. Google Ventures seeks to invest in start-up companies in a variety of fields ranging from Internet, software, and hardware to clean-tech, bio-tech, and health...
), and alternatively as a plain installer version with no third party bundle.
PeaZip Portable and PeaZip for Linux packages do not feature any third party bundle, and alongside PeaZip plain installer are suitable for environments requiring exclusively software released under OSI approved licenses.
See also
- Comparison of file archiversComparison of file archiversThe following tables compare general and technical information for a number of file archivers. Please see the individual products' articles for further information. They are neither all-inclusive nor are some entries necessarily up to date...
- List of archive formats
- Comparison of archive formatsComparison of archive formatsThere are many popular computer data archive formats for creating and maintaining archive files. The tables below compare many popular archive formats.-Purpose:The earliest use of archive formats was for backup, mobility, and archiving....
- List of portable software