Archive Utility

Archive Utility, formerly BOMArchiveHelper, is a basic compression utility that is included with macOS.

Product history
BOMArchiveHelper was first included with Mac OS X 10.3 "Jaguar". BOM is an acronym for , which identifies the encoding of the file to the reading application. The application is normally not searchable to end users and is stored in:
 * or

Archive Utility uses a proprietary implementation of ZIP compression in which resource fork data is preserved along with the data fork. However, file creation dates are lost and only last modification dates are saved in such archives. Most ordinary ZIP utilities will only decode the data fork from such archives. StuffIt Expander 9 or later supports decoding of resource forks from such archives.

Articles

 * Beyond .zip: Secrets of the Archive Utility by Kirk McElhearn at Macworld (2012-05-01)
 * OS X: Secrets of the Archive Utility by Jared Apperson at the Mac Observer (2013-06-05)
 * Understanding Compressed Files and Apple’s Archive Utility by Kirk McElhearn at Intego (2018-04-18)