In computing, CAB is the Microsoft Windows native compressed archive format. It supports compression and digital signing, and is 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. A filename extension is an extra set of (usually) alphanumeric characters that is appended to the end of a filename to allow computer users (as well as various pieces of software on the computer system) to quickly determine the type of data stored in the file. ... Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) is an Internet Standard that extends the format of e-mail to support text in character sets other than US-ASCII, non-text attachments, multi-part message bodies, and header information in non-ASCII character sets. ... The Microsoft Corporation, (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKSE: 4338) is a multinational computer technology corporation with global annual sales of US$44. ... In computer science and information theory, data compression or source coding is the process of encoding information using fewer bits (or other information-bearing units) than an unencoded representation would use through use of specific encoding schemes. ... Originally, the word computing was synonymous with counting and calculating, and a science and technology that deals with the original sense of computing mathematical calculations. ... Microsoft Windows is a family of operating systems by Microsoft. ... The Microsoft Corporation, (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKSE: 4338) is a multinational computer technology corporation with global annual sales of US$44. ... In programming, the Component Object Model (COM), also known as ActiveX, is a Microsoft technology for software components. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... The Windows Installer (previously known as Microsoft Installer, codename Darwin) is an engine for the installation, maintenance, and removal of software on modern Microsoft Windows systems. ...

The CAB file format allows for three data compression methods: In computer science and information theory, data compression or source coding is the process of encoding information using fewer bits (or other information-bearing units) than an unencoded representation would use through use of specific encoding schemes. ...

• 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), although it is not the same file format. DEFLATE is a lossless data compression algorithm that uses a combination of the LZ77 algorithm and Huffman coding. ... Phil Katz, shown in 1994, holds a computer disk containing compression software made by his company, PKWare Inc. ... The ZIP file format is the most widely-used compressed file format in the IBM PC world. ... The Quantum compression format is a somewhat obscure data compression method invented by a company called Cinematronics (written by an author identified as David Stafford). ... LZX is the name of an LZ77 family compression algorithm. ... The Microsoft Corporation, (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKSE: 4338) is a multinational computer technology corporation with global annual sales of US$44. ... InstallShield is a software tool for creating installers or software packages. ...

See also

• List of archive formats

This is a list of file formats used by archivers and compressors. ...

External links

• Microsoft Cabinet SDK
• 7-Zip is an LGPL licensed utility that supports 7z, ZIP, CAB, ARJ, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, CPIO, RPM and DEB.
• cabextract is Free Software for unpacking cabinet files in UNIX
• libmspack is an LGPL licensed, portable library for creating and extracting CAB files and other Microsoft misc. formats.