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Cram, published by Nexal IT and currently at version 1.3.1 with two versions available, is a multi-format archiver that handles ZIP, 7z, tar, ISO, and RAR through a single consistent command set, with archives optionally mountable as folders rather than extracted. The software creates and extracts ZIP, 7z, and tar archives with support for gzip, xz, zstd, bzip2, lz4, and brotli compression, creates and extracts ISO 9660 images, produces its own deduplicating .cram format, and reads RAR archives. The same four verbs apply uniformly across every supported format, and formats are identified through magic bytes rather than file extensions, reducing errors from mislabeled files. Beyond basic archiving, Cram can mount an archive as a folder, locate duplicate files across drives, write Reed-Solomon recovery sidecars to protect against data corruption, sign archives with ed25519 for authenticity verification, and download files over multiple simultaneous connections with resume support and mirror failover. These capabilities position it in the file compression and archive management category, suited to use cases such as backup preparation, data integrity protection, deduplication of storage, secure distribution of signed archives, and reliable large-file downloading. The package installs two commands: `cram`, the main engine, and `cram-extract`, a standalone decoder for .cram files that deliberately shares no code with the main engine, ensuring that a damaged archive retains an independent recovery path even if the primary decoder is affected. On Windows, the mounting feature depends on the optional Client-ProjFS Windows feature, which is disabled by default and must be enabled separately; all other commands function without it. Cram 1.3.1 therefore combines traditional archive creation and extraction with integrity, security, and transfer features in one tool, while its dual-decoder design and recovery sidecar support address resilience scenarios that conventional archivers typically leave to separate utilities.
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