Quote:
Originally Posted by dwig
Rather than being a compressed archive that functions as a container for discrete and complete files, MOBI is a binary encoded database. This makes it more of a file format itself than a container of other files.
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The PRC is the container. Like a ZIP file, a PRC file can contain data in any format - in this particular case, Mobi format. The two 4-letter ID strings at the start of the file tell the reading app what format the data is in - in the case of a Mobipocket file this are "MOBI" and "BOOK". If you open a Mobi file in Notepad, it will be garbage visually, but you'll see these strings very close to the start of the file.