ARC (or WRC) is a new, open source
archiving format developed by Bulat Ziganshin (
FreeARC 
project).
The format features strong but speed/memory efficient compression,
comparable to or better than RAR an 7Z formats for most filetypes.
ARC format supports also:
- recovery records (like RAR), for attempting data
repair in case of corruption of the archive;
- strong encryption with AES, Serpent and Twofish (all
up to 256 bit key size) and Blowfish.
Interestingly, ARC
command line syntax is close to WinRAR one, allowing easy porting of
scripts from one program to the other.
PeaZip offers a GUI frontend to
create,
browse, test, repair and extract ARC/WRC archives under Windows
and Linux (on Gnome, KDE or other desktop environments).
To extract one or more ARC/WRC files you can:
- Use context menu entry "- Extract archive(s) here"
- Use context menu entry "- Extract archive(s) to" to
be asked for output path
- Open it in PeaZip and use
"Extract all" button (you can chose output
path in "I/O" tab) or "Extract all to" to be asked for output path
- Open it in PeaZip and
doubleclick on an archived file to preview it
Please note that ARC (or ARK) is also the extension of an archive
format developed by SEA company.
It was of mainstream
diffusion before the introduction of ZIP; it has no connection with
FreeARC's ARC format. PeaZip does not support those
ARC/ARK files.
