Re: Off topic ZIP formats

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from Patricia M Godfrey  on Tue, 4 Mar
2003 17:15:25 -0500


> Info-Zip ... sent me to an ftp site
> and I'm not sure if I downloaded all the files I need.

Two files:
ftp://ftp.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/WIN32/zip23xN.zip
ftp://ftp.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/WIN32/unz550xN.exe

The latter is a self-extracting EXE, to get around the logical problem that if
you don't have UnZIP, you can't UnZIP the ZIP. If you know what I mean.

So command:
 unz55xN.exe unzip.exe
and then
 unzip.exe zip23xN zip.exe

Now you've got your two main EXEcutables: zip and unzip. MOVE them to a dir
in the PATH, such as %windir% (\WINDOWS or \WINNT). The rest of the files in
these ZIPs are not strictly necessary; they perform a variety of interesting
tasks that you will seldom need or use.

For short instructions, command [un]zip -?

For real instructions, extract file MANUAL from zip23xN.zip, and file unzip.txt
from unz55xN.exe. Note that the path and argument conventions are those of
*nix: e.g. "/" instead of "\", "-" instead of "/", and
path/case sensitivity
in filenames.

As a practical matter, you'll need a relatively small subset of commands. For
example:

unzip -t filename.zip -- Test zip for integrity (make sure received file isn't
corrupt -- a biggy)
unzip -v filename.zip -- View contents of zip
unzip -v -M filename.zip -- View contents, display with built-in More filter
(pages)
unzip filename.zip -- extract everything
unzip filename.zip file.ext -- extract one file
unzip filename.zip *.dll -- e.g. extract all DLLs
unzip -j filename.zip buried/in/subdir/file.ext -- extract one file, Junk the
path (otherwise whole directory structure of zipfile is extracted intact)

zip FILENAME.ZIP * -- zip all files in current dir into FILENAME.ZIP
zip -r -s -9 FILENAME.ZIP * -- Recurse subdirectories (get currdir and all
subdirs), include System/Hidden files, squash size as much as possible (range
is -1 [least] to -9 [most])
zip -d FILENAME.ZIP file.ext -- Delete a file in a zip

And so forth. Play with it. You can pipe files within a ZIP into a file
lister, you can -- aw, there's no point even beginning to describe what you can
do. Much! This stuff is solid.

-----------------------------
Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
-----------------------------