Home computer use: 7z and zip

Self-tutoring about file formats: the tutor mentions 7z and zip.

The other day I compressed a folder into 7z format to submit somewhere, and was told only zip format would be accepted. I was using 7-Zip, which also compresses to zip format, so I just compressed the folder that way instead and sent it off. Yet, I was surprised that zip would be accepted, but not 7z.

I decided to look into the matter and found an article about it on howtogeek.com. The article compares zip, 7z, and a couple of other formats.

7z might achieve more compression than the others – not necessarily by much. Yet, to me, that’s not the point; I’m interested in reliability. Sometimes I use 7z format, sometimes zip, but I mostly use the 7-Zip program to create the compressed file (which some call an archive) and to unpack a compressed file I receive. 7z, as I understand, is 7-Zip’s own compression flavour. However, 7-Zip will produce and decompress zip and other formats as well.

7-Zip continues to perform while the built-in compression utilities on some of my computers have given up. I assume (perhaps wrongly) that everyone else uses it, too, so I was surprised when someone would accept zip but not 7z.

Source:

7-zip.org

Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.