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<span id="openzim-page-title" class="mw-page-title-main"><span class="mw-page-title-main">File spanning</span></span>
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</style><div role="note" class="hatnote navigation-not-searchable">"Binary spanning" redirects here. For the mathematical optimization method, see <a href="Binary_splitting" title="Binary splitting">Binary splitting</a>.</div>
<p><b>File spanning</b> is the ability to package a single file or data stream into separate files of a specified size. This task implies the ability to re-combine the package files back into the original file or data stream.
</p><p>This is useful when saving large files onto smaller volumes or breaking large files up into smaller files for network messages of limited size (email, newsgroups). It also allows the creation of <a href="Parity_file" class="mw-redirect" title="Parity file">parity files</a> such as <a href="Parchive" title="Parchive">parchive</a> (PAR) to verify and restore missing or corrupted package files. Another advantage with this is coping with file size limits on some file systems of removable media, or coping with volume size limits of things like <a href="Floppy_disks" class="mw-redirect" title="Floppy disks">floppy disks</a>.
</p><p>Sometimes the file spanning process is hidden as a secondary operation such as with <a href="File_archiver" title="File archiver">file archivers</a>. In this case, many smaller files are first packaged into a data stream and then repackaged into a multi-file archive.
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<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="File_spanning_software">File spanning software</h2></div>
<p>Many file spanning utilities are available for nearly every OS and platform. Below are a few examples:
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<ul><li><a href="PKZip" class="mw-redirect" title="PKZip">PKZip</a>/<a href="WinZip" title="WinZip">WinZip</a></li>
<li><a href="RAR_(file_format)" title="RAR (file format)">RAR</a>/<a href="WinRAR" title="WinRAR">WinRAR</a></li>
<li>PAR/<a href="Parchive" title="Parchive">Parchive</a></li>
<li><a href="Split_(Unix)" title="Split (Unix)">split (Unix)</a></li></ul>
<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="See_also">See also</h2></div>
<ul><li><a href="File_splitter" class="mw-redirect" title="File splitter">File splitter</a></li></ul></div><!--htdig_noindex--><div><div class="zim-footer">
This article is issued from <a class="external text" title="Last edited on 2023-05-10" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/?title=File_spanning&oldid=1154128832">Wikipedia</a>. The text is available under <a class="external text" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en">Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0</a> unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.
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