What are RAR files and How do I install them?

[bumpkin]

Sorry if this question has been asked and answered before. On a dial up line it takes for ever to sift through forums.

I have finally finsihed the unmodded version and am now ready to install build 11 and some other patches. <img src="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/william.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":will" border="0" alt="william.gif" /> I have been collecting a lot of mods. Most I have been able to figure out. But there a couple of .RAR files that I am not sure how to deal with. These are brothel_charcters.rar deck.tga.rar and EnglishFleet.rar. I have looked through all of the game directories and did not find any rar files.

Do I need to get a special tool to unzip these files.

Thank you for any advice or assistance.
bumpkin.

 

[NathanKell]

It's a kind of compressed file, like zip, cab, ace, tar/gz, etc.
Most `multi-purpose` archivers support rar (there _must_ be some good freeware one but it slips my mind; on the "other side" there's winrar, winace, power archiver, and oodles more).

 

[sampow]

Check out <a href="http://www.rarlab.com/" target="_blank">http://www.rarlab.com/</a> to get a trial copy of WinRAR, it's pretty much the same as WinZip (plus it can handle zip files as well).