View source for Xar (Extensible Archive)

{{FormatInfo
|subcat=Archiving
|extensions={{ext|xar}}
}}

'''xar''' (eXtensible ARchive) is an open-source archive format which stores its directory information and other metadata in the form of [[XML]].

The file format starts with a short binary header (which begins with the "magic" sequence consisting of "xar!" expressed as a 32-bit integer made from the [[ASCII]] character representations (0x78617221) in network byte order ([[Endianness|big-endian]]). This byte order is used for all multi-byte numbers in the binary portions of the file format.

After the header is the directory information and metadata in XML, using the [[UTF-8]] character encoding.

The remainder of the file consists of the binary data of the archive contents, known as "The Heap".

== Format info ==
* [http://code.google.com/p/xar/wiki/xarformat Format of a xar archive]

== Other links ==
* [[Wikipedia:xar (archiver)|Wikipedia article]]
* [http://code.google.com/p/xar/ Official site]
* [http://code.google.com/p/xar/wiki/API_xar API documentation]
* [http://code.google.com/p/xar/wiki/whyxar Why xar is interesting]