RAR - What's new in the latest version Version 3.20 1. Previous WinRAR and RAR versions stored only the file modification time and only in DOS FAT format with 2 seconds precision. While it was enough for FAT, modern file systems provide a higher precision. Now RAR format can preserve modification, creation and last access time with the precision up to 0.0000001 second. The following changes had been done to support this facility: a) new "Time" part of archiving dialog includes "File time to store" options controlling file time processing. Other time related options also had been moved from "Backup" to "Time" section; b) new "Advanced" part of extraction dialog contains "File time" options allowing to select time fields to restore; c) command line -ts switch chooses time fields to process and precision of these fields; Time precision provided by ZIP format is not changed and equal to 2 seconds. 2. Changes in the extraction dialog: a) extraction dialog has been split to "General" and "Advanced" parts; b) "Display files in Explorer" option in "General" part instructs WinRAR to open Explorer window and display contents of destination folder when extraction is done; c) "Save settings" button saves the current state of both parts ("General" and "Advanced"). Saved state will be used as the default when activating the dialog next time. WinRAR saves all options except the destination path; d) "Advanced" part includes "File time" options allowing to select time fields to restore; e) new "Set file security" option in "Advanced" part controls restoring of NTFS file security information. Previous versions always extracted this information. 3. It is possible to rename files inside of RAR archives. It can be done either with "Rename file" command in "Commands" menu or in the context menu displaying on the right mouse click. In the command line mode you may use 'rn' command for this purpose. 4. "Next volume" dialog allows to choose the disk or folder for a new volume. WinRAR displays this dialog when creating volumes on removable disks or if "Pause after each volume" option is switched on. Previous versions did not allow to modify the volume name here. 5. "Test" and "Convert" commands can be applied to archives directly from Explorer context menu. By default these menu items are disabled, but you may enable them in WinRAR "Settings/Integration/Context menu items..." dialog. 6. "Pause" item added to context menu displayed on the right mouse button click on WinRAR tray icon. So you may pause WinRAR minimized to tray and continue it without restoring WinRAR to normal window. 7. If one of SFX volumes is missing, SFX archive displays "Next volume" dialog proposing to browse for required volume. 8. WinRAR allows to resize the window containing results of "Find" command. It saves modified window dimensions and restores them when using "Find" next time. 9. Toolbar: a) "Toolbars..." button in "Settings/General" activates the dialog allowing to turn on or off the main WinRAR toolbar, the additional small toolbar containing "Up one level" button and the address bar with path or archive information; b) buttons may have a variable width. So few large button titles in localized versions will not increase the total toolbar size too much like it happened before; c) if the width of buttons exceeds the width of toolbar, you may click on the small arrow at the right side of toolbar and choose hidden buttons from the menu. 10. Console RAR 'lb' and 'vb' commands list contents of archive in the bare mode - file names without any additional information. 11. WinRAR recognizes one more tar long file name extension designed to overcome 100 characters file name limit in tar archives. 12. Gzip archives contained zero in the file time field are processed correctly. Previous versions could display random date values for such archives. 13. Recovery volumes: a) when creating recovery volumes, the required disk space is preallocated in the beginning of operation. It helps to minimize the disk fragmentation; b) console RAR displays the operation percentage when creating recovery volumes or reconstructing missing or corrupt volumes. 14. If "Save file security" option is enabled, folders will be archived after files which they contain. It is necessary to avoid the situation when security attributes of just unpacked folder do not allow to extract files to it. 15. Optional description can be entered in "Add to favorite" dialog. If such description is available, WinRAR will display it in "Favorites" menu instead of folder or archive name. Version 3.11 1. "Convert" command is able to process .tgz archives. 2. GUI SFX modules provide more detailed diagnostic messages for CRC errors or file create errors. 3. Command line RAR returns the exit code 9 in case of file create errors. 4. Bugs fixed: a) "Convert" command failed to convert archives in folders with non-English (high ASCII) names; b) WinRAR could crash when attempting to display too long file type inside of archive; c) -ag command line switch placed an incorrect value to minutes field; d) options "Put each file to separate archive" and "Turn PC off when done", if set together, switched the computer off after creating the first archive; e) SFX module could display unnecessary "http-equiv ..." string when started under Windows 95. Version 3.10 1. New "Find" command allows to search for text string in archives and usual files. Its command line equivalent is 'i' command. 2. New "Convert" command converts archives from one format to other. It can process a single archive or several selected archives at once. It is possible to select file folders to convert their contents. 3. Repair command: a) "Repair" is able to correct data erasure and insertion errors in RAR archives containing the recovery record. Earlier it was possible to fix only those errors, when an archive size was not changed; b) "Repair" uses fixed.arcname.rar and rebuilt.arcname.rar names for repaired archives, where 'arcname' is the name of original archive. Previous versions used _recover.rar and _reconst.rar names; c) It is possible to select several archives in WinRAR shell and repair them at once; d) 'R' command accepts wildcards in the archive name to repair several archives at once. 4. Recovery volumes: a) WinRAR attempts to reconstruct both missing and damaged volumes. Original copies of damaged volumes are renamed to *.bad. Previous version was able to reconstruct only missing volumes; b) WinRAR automatically detects corrupt recovery volumes and ignores them; c) Recovery volumes naming scheme changed from N1_N2_N3.rev to less complicated N.rev, where 'N' is the number of volume. Old style recovery volumes are also recognized and supported; d) WinRAR displays the progress bar while reconstructing volumes. 5. SFX modules: a) Start and License SFX dialogs had been redesigned; b) SFX provides fully functional HTML support in "Text" command. Earlier versions supported only very limited set of HTML tags; c) "SavePath" SFX script command and "Save and restore paths" option in "Advanced SFX settings" allow to save the destination path entered by user in Registry and then restore it when executing SFX archive next time. 6. Compression improved when adding small text files to already existing archive using "Best" (-m5) or "Forced text" (-mct+) modes. 7. "Flat folders view" command in "Options/File list" menu switches between the classic tree style view and flat view, when all archived files and folders are displayed in the same list. 8. Option "Turn PC off when done" in "Advanced" part of archiving dialog and command line switch -ioff turn a computer off after completing an operation. Hardware must support the power off feature. 9. Sizes of ZIP-100, CD-650MB and CD-700MB disks are added to predefined values in the volume size list in archiving dialog. 10. New command line switch -iicon specifies an icon to use in SFX archive created or updated by WinRAR. This switch is supported only by WinRAR, console RAR does not recognize it. 11. Now WinRAR opens tar.gz and tar.bz2 archives in one step, so users do not need to unpack .tar manually. WinRAR does not store temporary .tar files on the disk, all required operations are performed directly in memory. 12. WinRAR is able to decompress multipart ZIP archives (.zip, .z01, .z02, ...). 13. New 'N' (archive number) modifier for -ag switch and "Generate archive name by mask" backup option of archiving dialog. WinRAR searches for already existing archive with a generated name and if it is found, increments the archive number until generating a unique name. For example, if you use -agyymmdd-nn several times in the same day, every new archive name will include a new increasing number. 14. If rarfiles.lst contains such two masks that all files matched by one mask are also matched by other, that mask which matches a smaller subset of file names will have higher priority regardless of its position in the list. For example, in case of *.cpp and f*.cpp masks, f*.cpp has higher priority. 15. WinRAR displays CRC16 column inside of LZH archives. 16. It is possible to disable the main menu and settings dialog using "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\WinRAR\Policy" or "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\WinRAR\Policy" Registry key. This feature may help to preserve WinRAR settings in multiuser environment. Read "Configuration settings/Registry variables" topic in winrar.hlp for more details.