What is a ZOO file? Learn about ZOO files here

A ZOO file is a compressed archive file, which means that it is a single file that inside can contain one or more files that have been reduced in size. This is often done to ease and speed up distribution over the Internet and to save storage space.

ZOO file details

A ZOO file is a type of compressed archive which is created by the ZOO utility, or another compatible utility.

The ZOO compression format was created in the 1980s by a programmer named Rahul Dhesi. It uses the LZW algorithm to compress files. All of the files compressed by this utility are given the extension ZOO.

ZOO files are not commonly used, even though it's open source and the source code has been released on newsgroups. There were versions for Unix and DOS platforms available.

Digital, which became Hewlett Packard, became followers of the ZOO file format, and Commodore Amiga users also used ZOO compression at some time.

Opening ZOO files

It's worth pointing out that not all ZOO files are actually compressed archives. The ZOO Tycoon game from Microsoft uses ZOO files to store saved ZOOs. These are not the same as ZOO file archives.

If you have a ZOO file on your computer and want to open it, then you will need a tool like BitZipper.

Technical details

If you are looking for technical details and the complete history of the .ZOO file format, please refer to this Wikipedia article.