Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Define "better".

If you just want to compress some stuff, zip is perfectly fine and widely supported. (or gzip or tar)

If you want fancy things with better compression, user rights/ACL (either linux or windows style), file dates, encryption, password protection. Well, I don't know what can do that.



I'd also add compression time and decompression time to that list. Zip wasn't actually the best compression algorithm I remember seeing in its original days, it just was the best compromise of speed of compression, extraction, and compressed size. The TOC feature was a killer because even the fastest formats decompressed slow, not to mention space was more of a premium.

An additional feature that sometimes is important as well is making itself stream friendly so you can read the metadata without the entire file (or easily before streaming) as it is streamed over some context or using some technology.

The landscape is much different now and so some of features you'd design into a new format didn't exist then, while others that were concerns are less concerns now.

As parent hints, the compatibility alone makes zip still very desirable and actual compression is good enough given size of disks today for most people. Obviously there are exceptions.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: