File extension zoo

Name: Archive Files

Popularity: 10

Open With: ALZip

What is this zoo file?

The ZOO file extension identifies files compressed by ZOO, a compression software developed in the 1980's with its program source code compatible with various Unix-like operating systems. It uses an algorithm based on the Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW) compression, which replaces strings of characters with single codes. The algorithm does not analyze any of the characters but instead add every new string it sees to the table of strings. When a single code is produced rather than the string of characters, compression is successful.Files with the .zoo extension first appeared on comp.sources.misc Usenet newsgroup. Afterwards, their binaries have been published in the community for MS-DOS users. These files have been widely used by Digital VAX computers (now Hewlett Packard) that run on the OpenVMS operating systems and for some time have been also used by the group of Commodore Amiga users.An archive file with the .zoo extension usually begins with a header whose field is 34-bytes in length. The first 20 bytes is the header text, which is padded with nulls followed by 4 bytes of Hex string: A7DCFDC4. Two consecutive 4 bytes Offset of the first file in the archive follows but the last one has a -1 value. The next two values is one byte each of the ZOO's versions with the last value as the minimum version needed to extract files from.Each archived file inside files with the .zoo extension has its own header of 35 bytes. The first 4 bytes is a Hex string whose value is the same as that of the archive file followed by one byte of directory entry type, one byte of compression method used, 4 bytes offset of the next directory entry, and 4 bytes offset of the next header.The original date and time of the file contain 2 bytes followed by 2 bytes of the file's CRC-16, 4 bytes of uncompressed file size, and 4 bytes of compressed file size. The ZOO version by which the file was compressed is the minimum version of ZOO required to remove the file, and a deleted flag has one-byte each. Another 4 bytes offset of file comment field and 2 bytes length of comment field can be found before the filename variable, which indicates the end of the file.

Name: Game Files

Popularity: 1

Open With: Zoo Tycoon

What is this zoo file?

Saved game file created with Zoo Tycoon, a zoo simulation game developed by Microsoft; stores game progress so the player can resume the game at a later time; should be stored in the "Saved Games" folder within the Zoo Tycoon directory.