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JAEN

.lha

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LHA / LZH archive

A Japanese archive format released in 1988 by Haruyasu Yoshizaki. Ruled Japanese PC-98 and Windows 3.1 file distribution before ZIP took over. Rarely seen outside Japan; `.lha` and `.lzh` share the same bytes.

MIME types

  • application/x-lzh-compressed
  • application/x-lha

Category

archive

Aliases

.lzh

What opens this file

  • 7-Zip
  • The Unarchiver
  • Keka
  • LhaForge
  • lhasa CLI

How to open by OS

Windows

  • 7-Zip, LhaForge, Explzh (strong Japanese locale support).

Mac

  • The Unarchiver, Keka.

Linux

  • `lhasa` package.

Ios

  • iZip (compatible build).

Android

  • ZArchiver.

Safety notes

  • A 2017 vulnerability (CVE-2017-17552) in an LHA decompression library affected some antivirus scanners. Use up-to-date extraction tools.
  • Japanese business email from the 2000s often carried malware inside .lzh. Scan first, extract second.

Common mistakes

  • Japanese public-sector distributions kept using .lzh well into the 2010s, even though post-Vista Windows can't open it natively. ZIP is the safer modern choice.
  • Renaming .lzh to .zip does not help — they are different formats. Always use a dedicated extractor.

FAQ

What's the difference between .lha and .lzh?
None at the byte level — they are aliases. Both extensions arose together during the Windows 3.1 era and still coexist today. Any LHA tool opens both.

Related extensions

References