The .LBR file format was an
archive file format
In computing, an archive file is a computer file that is composed of one or more files along with metadata. Archive files are used to collect multiple data files together into a single file for easier portability and storage, or simply to compres ...
invented by Gary P. Novosielski used on
CP/M
CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/ 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initial ...
and
DOS
DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems.
DOS may also refer to:
Computing
* Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel
* Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...
operating systems during the early 1980s.
Packages in .LBR format were created by the LU program. It can act in interactive and parameter-driven mode, and can add, extract, delete files from the LBR package.
[LU v210 User Manual from SimTel archiv]
A companion program, still developed by Novosielski, is LRUN.COM : a small program which allows running a .COM (executable code) directly from any library, without having to extract it to a separate disk file.
Later compatible programs like NULU arrived for .LBR creation, and many tools such as LT and QL were capable of extracting from .LBR archives.
.LBR is an abbreviation of "Library", and, resembling the
.tar
In computing, tar is a computer software utility for collecting many files into one archive file, often referred to as a tarball, for distribution or backup purposes. The name is derived from "tape archive", as it was originally developed ...
file format, member files were only stored in the .LBR file, not compressed.
As transfer of LBR files by modem was common, it was typical practice for archiving a collection of files to compress them using the
SQ or
CRUNCH programs then store them in an .LBR archive, or else (more rarely) store the files in the LBR archive, then use SQ or CRUNCH to compress the archive.
A compressed LBR archive file was given the extension ".LQR" (if squeezed) or ".LZR" (if crunched); however, it was more common to compress the members of the archive than to compress the archive as a whole.
As MS-DOS and other operating systems became more popular and displaced CP/M, .LBR's popularity waned.
The development of the
ARC archiver which both compressed and archived files in one program went a long way towards displacing .LBR on MS-DOS systems; on CP/M systems, .LBR persisted longer due to the lack of a useful ARC port.
References
Archive formats
Computer file formats
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