ZIP
Z
ZIP
Definition
A widely used archive file format that supports lossless data compression. Created by Phil Katz in 1989, it is natively supported by all major operating systems.
ZIP: Universal Compression
ZIP is the most widely used archive format in the world, supported natively by Windows, macOS, and Linux. Created by Phil Katz in 1989, the format uses DEFLATE compression by default. Modern ZIP implementations support AES-256 encryption, ZIP64 extensions for files over 4 GB, and various compression methods including LZMA and Bzip2. ZIP is used everywhere from email attachments and software distribution to Java JAR files and Office documents (DOCX, XLSX are ZIP archives internally).