ZST file type, what is Zstandard compression format

ZST file extension

ZST file extension designates a pure data compression format, not providing file archival or encryption features.
The input data is compressed with Yann Collet's Zstandard algorithm, a new flexible design that at lower compression settings provides faster than Deflate (Gzip / ZIP) performances and at highest compression settings provides compression ratio comparable with 7-Zip's LZMA (.7Z).

PeaZip features creation and extraction of Zstandard files on Windows and Linux systems using Facebook's ZSTD implementation, and can read (open, test and extract) and write (compress to) ZST file type.

Features and goals of ZST file format

A goal of Zstandard design is near-real time extraction, performing very fast (faster than Gzip / ZIP) and with small variations in decompressing ZST created with lowest or higher compression settings.

Zstandard implementation, ZSTD, making use of multi-threading parallelism and on recent multi-core CPUs currently outperforms single-threaded Brotli implementation at similar levels of compression.

Use of ZST file format

Due to  the by-design limitation of being a single file compressor, PeaZip uses Zstandard compression cascaded with TAR archiving in order to consolidate multiple input files / folders into a single container, which is then compressed originating a .tar.zst file.
Zstandard-compressed tar archives are sometimes identified by .tzst file extension instead or the composite tar.zst extension.
Read more about .zst file type on ZSTD official repository, and Zstandard entry on Wikipedia.

Synopsis: Zst file extension. Zstandard single file compression format specification and features in terms of compression speed and compression ratio. What is .zst file type.

Topics: ZST file extension specs, Zstandard compression format

PeaZip > FAQ > ZST extension (Zstandard compressed files)