file. Some formats are well-defined by their authors and have become conventions supported by multiple vendors and communities. Types Archiving only formats store metadata and concatenate files. Compression only formats only compress files. Multi-function formats can store metadata, concatenate, compress, encrypt, create error detection and recovery information, and package the archive into self-extracting and self-expanding files. Software packaging formats are used to create software packages that may be self-installing files. Disk image formats are used to create disk images of mass storage volumes. Examples Filename extensions used to distinguish different types of archives include zip, rar, 7z, and tar, the first of which is the most widely implemented. Java also introduced a whole family of archive extensions such as jar and war (j is for Java and w is for web). They are used to exchange entire byte-code deployment. Sometimes they are also used to exchange source code and other text, HTML and XML files. By default they are all compressed. Error detection and recovery Archive files often include parity checks and other checksums for error detection, for instance zip files use a cyclic redundancy check (CRC). RAR archives may include additional error correction data (called recovery records). Archive files that do not natively support recovery records can use separate parchive (PAR) files that allows for additional error correction and recovery of missing files in a multi-file archive. See also File archiver Disk image Digital container format, a similar concept in media files References "Application Note on the .ZIP file format"- official white paper published by PKWARE, Inc. Tape Archive (.TAR) file format specification- excerpt from File Format List 2.0 by Max Maischein "IBM 726 Magnetic tape reader/recorder from IBM Archives "1401 Data Processing System" from IBM Archives External links Computer files Computer archives Computer file systems Disk images Records management