.RAR File Extension

File archive containing one or more files compressed with RAR compression; uses a higher compression ratio than typical ZIP compression; incorporates a proprietary compression algorithm that is now used by other compressors, including 7-Zip for its .7Z files; may be extracted using a variety of programs.

The RAR compressor can also create spanned, or multi-volume, archives, which are split across several compressed files. These files typically have file extensions from ".R00" to ".R99," or they may all have the standard ".RAR" extension.

The name "RAR" stands for "Roshal ARchive," which was named after Eugene Roshal, the RAR compression algorithm developer.