Taxi Format

CAB archives can allocate space in the archives as well as for each of the files in the archives, for some application-specific applications such as electronic signature or random accesses. Many Microsoft deployment technology products use the CAB format, including Windows Installer, Setup API, Device Installer, and AdvPack (used by IE to deploy Microsoft Windows Mobile Network (ActiveX) components).

Sometimes you associate your lab data with self-extracting applications like IExpress, where the execution tool will extract the corresponding lab data. Sometimes CFB executables are also included in other executables. MSI and MSU for example (the latter are labs with only one additional extension) usually contain one or more embeded labs.

Up to 65535 CAB directories (not to be mixed up with filesystem directories) can be contained in a CAB archives, up to 65535 each. Inside, each CAB directory is handled as a separate packed cluster, enabling more effective packing than individual packing of each one. All entries in a CAB directory must be a filename.

1 ] Due to this tree it is not possible to save empty folder in CAB-Archive. This example shows a CAB filing tree that illustrates the relationships between CAB directories and files: In the CAB format, no information is given about how to handle pathways, so it is left to the implementing team.

In some cases, filename suffixes are applied only to names of individual documents, as if all documents in a CAB repository are located in a unique directory. This is how it works, just like Microsoft Windows Explorer, which can open CAB repositories as such. In some cases, the path can be saved and created as needed after extracting. The EXE (tools from Microsoft Cabinet SDK[2]) and lcab[3] and cabextract[4] (opensource third-party tools) work like this.

There are many types of softwares that can be used to retrieve the content of a CAB archival data set, among them Microsoft Windows itself (via Explorer, Setup API, expand.exe or extract.exe) as well as well-known softwares like WinZip, WinRAR or 7-Zip. Fewer applications, however, can build CAB files. A complete listing can be found under Comparison of Files Archivists Section Archiving Forms.

Windows executable makecab.exe is used to build log repositories for CAB: Reread the data set (with the suffix. ddf) and build a log containing more than one data set in a shallow or hierarchy format like a filesystem. Other installers (e.g. InstallShield) also use the file name extensions of . config for their own native archival format.

The InstallShield uses zip for compressing (see Deflate), but their header is not the same as that of Microsoft CABs, so they are not compatible and cannot be processed or modified with applications developed for the default cabinet format. Third parties specialised utility software such as Unshield[6] can retrieve this particular proprietary format.

The Microsoft Public Utility has a "Pack and Go" function that combines a Public Utility User Guide together with all outside hyperlinks into a CAB with the . PUZ expansion. Those are for activation with a pet. This is an executable that will be shared with the . PUZ executable. You can open these data with any CAB data extract software.