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In computing, CAB is the Microsoft Windows native compressed archive format. It supports compression and digital signing, and it's used in a variety of Microsoft installation engines: Setup API, Device Installer, AdvPack (for the installation of ActiveX components from Internet Explorer) and Windows Installer.
The CAB file format allows for three data compression methods:
- deflate, invented by Phil Katz, the author of the ZIP file format.
- Quantum, licensed from David Stafford, the author of the Quantum archiver.
- LZX, invented by Jonathan Forbes and Tomi Poutanen, given to Microsoft when Jonathan joined the company.
The CAB file extension is also used in many installers (InstallShield and others), althouch it is not the same file format.
- application/x-cab-compressed
See also
ZIP, 7-Zip, RAR, LHA, DGCA, GCA, archive formats.
External links
- 7-Zip (http://www.7-zip.org/) is an LGPL licensed utility that supports 7z, ZIP, CAB, RAR, ARJ, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, CPIO, RPM and DEB.
- cabextract (http://www.kyz.uklinux.net/cabextract.php) is Free Software for unpacking cabinet files in UNIX
- libmspack (http://www.kyz.uklinux.net/libmspack/) is an LGPL licensed, portable library for creating and extracting CAB files and other Microsoft formats.
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