While discussing file compression/archive formats on IRC, Ear mentioned that Microsoft's CAB file format is very compact. I wasn't sure if I believed him, but I went ahead and did a little test. Here are the results:

  • jrn-resources.tar: 23,810,375 (23.8 MB)
  • jrn-resources.zip: 1,585,700 (1.58 MB)
  • jrn-resources.tgz: 1,547,107 (1.54 MB)
  • jrn-resources.rar: 786,016 (786 kB)
  • jrn-resources.tbz: 752,647 (752 kB)
  • jrn-resources.cab: 552,521 (552 kB)
  • jrn-resources.7z: 462,927 (462 kB)

Why did CAB of all things win? And by such a huge margin? It didn't even take that long to compress! (Faster than .tgz)

Update: 7Zip beats even CAB. :o I'm really impressed... perhaps I should start using 7Zip. The source code for it is available as well! (MUCH better than RAR.)