Java Programming

A3The Jar Tool

3.1 INTRODUCTION

JAR (Java Archive) is a platform-independent file format that aggregates many files into one. The JAR tool combines multiple files into a single JAR file. JAR is a general-purpose archiving and compression tool, based on ZIP and ZLIB compression format. However, JAR was designed mainly to facilitate the packaging of Java applets or applications into a single archive. A JAR file allows a programmer to efficiently deploy a set of classes and their associated resources. Multiple Java applets and their requisite components (.class files, images and sounds) can be bundled in a JAR file and subsequently downloaded to a browser in a single HTTP transaction, greatly improving the download speed. The JAR format also ...