LHARK
From Just Solve the File Format Problem
- Not to be confused with LHarc – see LHA.
LHARK is a compressed archiving utility for DOS, developed by Kerwin F. Medina. It uses LHA file format, but adds a custom compression scheme, with identifier "lh7".
Unfortunately, this conflicts with a different lh7 compression scheme supported by some of the main-line LHA software (e.g. LHA 2.66+, LHa for Unix).
Identification
LHARK uses generalized LHA format, so start with LHA#Identification.
An LHA member file with all of the following properties almost certainly uses LHARK compression:
- The compression method field starting at offset 2 is "
-lh7-". - The byte at offset 20 is
0x01(the header level). - The byte at offset 24+{the value of the byte at offset 21} is
0x20. This "OS code" (an ASCII space) is reasonably, though not completely, specific to LHARK.
Note that if the first member file of an LHARK-created file was incompressible, then the standard "-lh0-" compression method ID will appear at file offset 2, instead of "-lh7-".
Software
- LHARK 0.3e: Tech Arsenal 3 → ARCHIVE/LHARK03E.ZIP
- LHARK 0.4a (bare executable)
- LHARK 0.4d
- Deark
Sample files
- https://telparia.com/fileFormatSamples/archive/lha/LHARK.LZH
- Discos PCManía → PCMania CD53_1.iso → SHAREWAR/JUEGOS/EYEBALL/EYEDFILE
