The team at Rarlab has released updates for the flagship archiving tools, WinRAR 7.0, and RAR 7.0. Versions are now available for Linux, macOS, Windows, Android, and FreeBSD, with the project’s source code also made accessible under a restrictive license.
Although RAR7’s compression rate is lower than LZMA2 when using dictionaries up to 4 GByte, it offers faster compression. Unique features also include recovery information and field support for file creation, modification, and last opening.
WinRAR 7.0 and RAR 7.0 now support dictionary sizes of up to 64 GByte. This advancement allows for more efficient compression, especially for virtual machine images. If the dictionary size exceeds 4 GByte, any size can be indicated. Earlier, only powers of two were supported. In order to decompress archives with dictionaries larger than 4 GByte, WinRAR/RAR 7.0 or a later version is required. A default-off data duplication search algorithm has been added, controlled by the command line switch “-mcl[+|-]”. Also available is the switch “-mcx” which activates a slower, more thorough duplication search algorithm. Both options are compatible with RAR 5.0 decompression and later versions. Archive file paths have been extended from 2047 to 65,535 characters.
Since the January 2022 WinRAR 6.1 update, developers ceased support for graphic mode on Windows XP. This feature is only available to platforms running Windows Vista and onwards. In August 2021, with the release of WinRAR 6.23, an exploit was fixed that allowed hackers to remotely execute arbitrary code within a specifically prepared archive without the user’s knowledge.
