                RAR - What's new in the latest version


   Version 4.20

   1. Changes in RAR compression:

      a) Multithreaded RAR compression is enabled by default.
         You can disable it with -mt1 switch.

         Comparing to RAR 4.11, some speed gain is possible
         in single processor mode as well.

         Speed gain depends on data type and average file size.
         Several cores are utilized more efficiently when compressing
         large files.

      b) we had to increase memory requirements to achieve higher
         compression speed. General RAR compression algorithm allocates
         about 120 MB comparing to 40 MB in RAR 4.11;

      c) RAR text compression algorithm cannot utilize several CPU cores
         efficiently, so its performance in multiprocessor environment
         is much lower than for general algorithm. Also its decompression
         speed is much lower than in general algorithm regardless of
         CPU number. So we decided to disable the text algorithm by default.

         If you need maximum possible compression ratio for plain text data
         regardless of speed, you can enable the text compression
         with -mct switch.

   2. RAR general decompression algorithm speed is slightly improved,
      though not to same extent as RAR compression. RAR decompression
      is not able to use several processor cores, so its performance
      does not depend on a number of cores.


   Version 4.11

   1. Bugs fixed:

      a) if -x*\somedir\* exclusion mask was specified when archiving 
         and if name of current directory contained 'somedir', RAR could
         exclude all files and stop creating an archive.


   Version 4.10

   1. Modifications of switch -ag behavior:

      a) -ag can be used with all RAR commands, not just with archiving only;

      b) 'N' format character behavior differs in archiving and non-archiving
         operations. When archiving, it is incremented until the first unused
         name is found. In non-archiving operations like extracting it selects
         the existing archive preceding the first unused name;

      c) 'I' format character allows to specify minutes regardless of presence
         and position of 'H' (hours) in format string. It can be used
         instead of 'M' (minutes), when you wish to place minutes before
         hours or do not need hours at all.

   2. New -log[fmt][=name] switch allows to write archive and file names
      to log file in archiving, extracting, deleting and listing commands.
      This switch is especially useful, when you need to further process
      an archive created with -ag or -v switches, because -log provides
      the archive name generated by RAR.
  
   3. New -@[+] switch allows to process all parameters starting from
      '@' character either as file names (-@) or as file lists (-@+).

   4. Volume size in -v<size> switch can be specified as a decimal fraction.
      Dot (.) is used as the decimal mark. For example, -v1.5g means
      1.5 gigabytes.

   
   Version 4.01

   1. Bugs fixed:

      a) "Repair" command failed to properly reconstruct structure
         of RAR archives, which contained at least one file with packed
         size exceeding 4 GB.

         This bug did not affect the recovery record based repair.
         It happened only if recovery record was not found and RAR
         performed reconstruction of archive structure;

      b) RAR could crash when creating a new archive with -agNNNN switch
         if archive number in generated name was very large,
         like a thousand or more.


   Version 4.00

   1. RAR decompression speed is improved. Depending on data type,
      decompression can be up to 30% faster than in previous versions.

      Both the general RAR algorithm and most of special RAR multimedia
      methods benefit from this improvement. The only module of RAR
      algorithm, which is not affected, is "Text compression" method.
   
   2. Changes in -x<file> switch syntax. Now you can specify a wildcard
      exclusion mask for folders. Such mask must have the trailing '\'
      character, like -x*tmp*\ or -x*\temp\

   3. Recovery volume processing involves less disk seek operations
      resulting in higher performance.

   4. New error code 10 ("no files") is added to list of error codes.
      This new code can be returned by archive, extract, delete
      and repair commands. It means that RAR did not find any files
      matched the specified file or archive mask.

   
   Version 3.93

   1. Bugs fixed:

      a) in RAR 3.92 -xd:\path\dir switch could also exclude directories,
         which path does not match the path specified in the switch
         and only the directory name is the same as specified;
      
      b) switches -y -or did not work correctly together. Switch -or was
         ignored in presence of -y.

   
   Version 3.92

   1. In RAR 3.91 -x<mask> switch could also exclude directories
      from archiving even if mask contained wilcard characters and did not
      contain a path. For example, -x*. excluded all those directories,
      which do not have the extension in the name. Now -x switch uses
      RAR 3.80 approach for masks without path, excluding directories
      only if mask does not contain wildcards and matches the directory
      name exactly

   2. If file matched two different masks in RarFiles.lst, 
      RAR could select the last match. Normally, if neither of masks
      is a subset of another, the first match must be chosen.


   Version 3.91

   1. Bugs fixed:

      a) hexadecimal search in "ih" command failed to find matches
         if first byte in search string was greater than 127.


   Version 3.90

   1. New command line switch -r- disables recursion completely.
      So 'rar a -r- arc dirname' command will add only the empty
      dirname folder and ignore its contents. By default, if dirname
      does not include wildcards, RAR adds its contents even if
      -r switch is not specified.

   2. If used when extracting, the new command line switch -ai
      forces RAR to ignore file attributes. When using this switch,
      extracted files will always have attributes assigned by
      operating system to a newly created file by default.

   3. If output file name is not specified in "cw" command,
      RAR will send comment data to stdout.

   4. When compressing stdin data with -si[name] switch, RAR sets 
      modification time of archived entry to current system time.
      Previous RAR versions did not fill this field, resulting in
      meaningless modification time for stdin.
