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7-Zip is a free and open-source file archiver, a utility used to place groups of files within compressed containers known as "archives". It is developed by Igor Pavlov and was first released in 1999.7-Zip uses its own 7z archive format, but can read and write several other archive formats. The program can be used from a command-line interface as the command p7zip, or through a graphical user interface that also features shell integration. Most of the 7-Zip source code is under the GNU LGPL license; the unRAR code, however, is under the GNU LGPL with an "unRAR restriction", which states that developers are not permitted to use the code to reverse-engineer the RAR compression algorithm.
7z
Main article: 7z
By default, 7-Zip creates 7z-format archives with a .7z file extension. Each archive can contain multiple directories and files. As a container format, security or size reduction are achieved using a stacked combination of filters. These can consist of pre-processors, compression algorithms, and encryption filters.
Others
7-Zip supports a number of other compression and non-compression archive formats (both for packing and unpacking), including ZIP, gzip, bzip2, xz, tar, and WIM. The utility also supports unpacking APM, ar, ARJ, chm, cpio, deb, FLV, JAR, LHA/LZH, LZMA, MSLZ, Office Open XML, onepkg, RAR, RPM, smzip, SWF, XAR, and Z archives and cramfs, DMG, FAT, HFS, ISO, MBR, NTFS, SquashFS, UDF, and VHD disk images.
When compressing ZIP or gzip files, 7-Zip uses its own DEFLATE encoder, which may achieve higher compression, but at lower speed, than the more common zlib DEFLATE implementation. The 7-Zip deflate encoder implementation is available separately as part of the AdvanceCOMP suite of tools.
File manager
7-Zip comes with a file manager along with the standard archiver tools. The file manager has a toolbar with options to create an archive, extract an archive, test an archive to detect errors, copy, move, and delete files, and open a file properties menu exclusive to 7-Zip.
When going up one directory on the root, all drives, removable or internal appear. Going up again shows a list with four options:
Computer: loads the drives list
Documents: loads user's documents, usually at %UserProfile%\My Documents
Network: loads a list of all network clients connected
Features
7-Zip supports:
The 256-bit AES cipher. Encryption can be enabled for both files and the 7z hierarchy. When the hierarchy is encrypted, users are required to supply a password to see the filenames contained within the archive. WinZip-developed Zip file AES encryption standard is also available in 7-Zip to encrypt ZIP archives with AES 256-bit, but it does not offer filename encryption as in 7z archives.
Volumes of dynamically variable sizes, allowing use for backups on removable media such as writable CDs and DVDs
Usability as a basic orthodox file manager when used in dual panel mode
Multiple-core CPU threading
Opening EXE files as archives, allowing the decompression of data from inside many "Setup" or "Installer" or "Extract" type programs without having to launch them
Unpacking archives with corrupted filenames, renaming the files as required
Create self-extracting single-volume archives
Command-line interface
Graphical user interface. The Windows version comes with its own GUI; however, p7zip uses the GUI of the Unix/Linux Archive Manager.