What makes a phar a phar and not a tar or a zip?
PHP Manual

Ingredients of all Phar archives, independent of file format

All Phar archives contain three to four sections:

  1. a stub

  2. a manifest describing the contents

  3. the file contents

  4. [optional] a signature for verifying Phar integrity (phar file format only)


What makes a phar a phar and not a tar or a zip?
PHP Manual