Searching archives recursively
Moderators: white, Hacker, petermad, Stefan2
Searching archives recursively
This issue was discussed before, but I don't know if it was considered as an enhancement.
TC gives a nice virtualization of archives as if they were directories. You can double click a ZIP file and see the files inside it and in case that ZIP file contains another ZIP file you can double click it again. However, "search" does not work that way. It supports "Search archives" and "Search subdirectories", but there is no way to achieve recursive archive search what so ever (I have this need every day, and then I go through the tedious process of unpacking the first "layer" before searching).
I suggest that the "Search subdirectories" combo will be renamed "search recursively (directories/archives)" and if the user enables the "search archives" checkbox, an archive-within-archive search will be performed accordingly. Any other user interface will be welcomed as well...
Katzco
TC gives a nice virtualization of archives as if they were directories. You can double click a ZIP file and see the files inside it and in case that ZIP file contains another ZIP file you can double click it again. However, "search" does not work that way. It supports "Search archives" and "Search subdirectories", but there is no way to achieve recursive archive search what so ever (I have this need every day, and then I go through the tedious process of unpacking the first "layer" before searching).
I suggest that the "Search subdirectories" combo will be renamed "search recursively (directories/archives)" and if the user enables the "search archives" checkbox, an archive-within-archive search will be performed accordingly. Any other user interface will be welcomed as well...
Katzco
My opinion about this:
1. I have no recursive archives because it is ugly. It doesn't improve compression but improves complexity and inconvenience.
2. If I found such recursive archive, I'll unpack it. And, if I need to keep archive, create an archive with folders instead of archives.
3. I agree with Christian, it is quite complex to make such procedure.
1. I have no recursive archives because it is ugly. It doesn't improve compression but improves complexity and inconvenience.
2. If I found such recursive archive, I'll unpack it. And, if I need to keep archive, create an archive with folders instead of archives.
3. I agree with Christian, it is quite complex to make such procedure.
Complex does not mean useless (usually on the contrary...). All I say is that if file navigation through archives looks and feels like virtual directories, and TC can drill in and out of them seamlessly, so does search should be.
In any case I agree that recursive archives are ugly, but I come across them every day at work, and therefore recursive search will be a highly appreciated addition.
In any case I agree that recursive archives are ugly, but I come across them every day at work, and therefore recursive search will be a highly appreciated addition.
well sometimes you do not have another option:MVV wrote:My opinion about this:
1. I have no recursive archives because it is ugly. It doesn't improve compression but improves complexity and inconvenience.
2. If I found such recursive archive, I'll unpack it. And, if I need to keep archive, create an archive with folders instead of archives.
3. I agree with Christian, it is quite complex to make such procedure.
I have abc.ear (web application) and inside is a few .war files, that contains beside another files some .jar files. EAR, WAR and JAR files are zip files just different extension. When you want to deploy that app to application server, you have to use that .ear.
I would love to have recursive search in .war file in .ear. And not just in regular search, but also in Compare by contents - in fact I am doing it almost daily to compare two .ear files, but I cannot do it all at one shot; I have to go inside of both and then compare - if any archive inside is different, I have to again navigate to it, enter inside in both panels and run Compare by contents
ado
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- Junior Member
- Posts: 65
- Joined: 2008-01-14, 15:58 UTC
Personally I rarely use cascaded archives.katzco wrote:Any comment about the original subject?
But it would be useful for TGZ format (TAR in GZ archive), in Linux a quite common format. So:
Support, useful.
Who the hell is General Failure, and why is he reading my disk?
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- Balderstrom
- Power Member
- Posts: 2148
- Joined: 2005-10-11, 10:10 UTC
It's actually not seamless, TC is able to open the first tier of archives (zip/rar/cab/etc) and display the file lists as if it was a directory. Any further archives within an archive are actually unpacked to the Temp folder to be able to view the contents.katzco wrote:All I say is that if file navigation through archives looks and feels like virtual directories, and TC can drill in and out of them seamlessly,
Code: Select all
AddressBar:: c:\Program Files\Accessories\TrayMenu\Copy of TRMN202b_DLL.rar\*.*
TRMN202b_DLL\
Window List.rar
Code: Select all
AddressBar:: c:\UsR\FOO\LOCALS~1\Temp\_tc\Window List.rar\*.*
Window List.windowlist
And that is just one additional archive level, imagine an archive in an archive in an archive...
right, true, but TC has to do it anyway if you choose to search for text in files and not just by filenameBalderstrom wrote: Similiar to how a Tar.gz is considered a single file that has been compressed, TC will unpack the whole thing to the Temp folder before displaying any contents.
And that is just one additional archive level, imagine an archive in an archive in an archive...
ado
- Balderstrom
- Power Member
- Posts: 2148
- Joined: 2005-10-11, 10:10 UTC
I don't believe its possible, without unpacking. From my recollection of *nix, TAR's were searchable and TGZ/TBZ/TAR.gz/TAR.bz were not.
GZIP and BZIP are single file compressors, and are next to useless without TAR.
CABS aren't much better, but at least they have a dff file you can generate to do a multi-cab archive that is easily searchable.
All(MOST) of Microsoft's patches are self-extracting-multi-file CAB. CAB also can use LZ* compression instead of Zip.
7z is probably a decent choice, but I find it far too slow and memory intensive for "some" extra compression. I generally turn all my archives into RARs as it has the best overall feature-set and on-par compression, IMHO
The only way it might be doable is utilizing something like PFM's Audit Package, which allows you to generate a PersonalFolder that has ZIP compression. When that file is mounted (as a Folder) You can then drop Files into the "mounted Folder". Everything inside is automatically compressed ZIP. So if you put multiple .ZIP or .RAR files inside then they would still be able to be opened as usual.
Of course when that Folder is unmounted it isn't much of anything. aside from named as FOOBAR.PFO or the like.
When mounted again you would see|have access to all of your files inside.
It's very interesting technology really, and I don't forsee Mr.Ghisler implementing something like that from scratch - it would be far too much work when so many other things could be done. Perhaps it could be licensed? I dunno.
I know I've been having fun playing around with the TemporaryFolders (on-the-fly-RAM drives), Personal(Compressed)Folders/CFS, and converted compressed CD/DVD ISO's.
GZIP and BZIP are single file compressors, and are next to useless without TAR.
CABS aren't much better, but at least they have a dff file you can generate to do a multi-cab archive that is easily searchable.
All(MOST) of Microsoft's patches are self-extracting-multi-file CAB. CAB also can use LZ* compression instead of Zip.
7z is probably a decent choice, but I find it far too slow and memory intensive for "some" extra compression. I generally turn all my archives into RARs as it has the best overall feature-set and on-par compression, IMHO
The only way it might be doable is utilizing something like PFM's Audit Package, which allows you to generate a PersonalFolder that has ZIP compression. When that file is mounted (as a Folder) You can then drop Files into the "mounted Folder". Everything inside is automatically compressed ZIP. So if you put multiple .ZIP or .RAR files inside then they would still be able to be opened as usual.
Of course when that Folder is unmounted it isn't much of anything. aside from named as FOOBAR.PFO or the like.
When mounted again you would see|have access to all of your files inside.
It's very interesting technology really, and I don't forsee Mr.Ghisler implementing something like that from scratch - it would be far too much work when so many other things could be done. Perhaps it could be licensed? I dunno.
I know I've been having fun playing around with the TemporaryFolders (on-the-fly-RAM drives), Personal(Compressed)Folders/CFS, and converted compressed CD/DVD ISO's.
*BLINK* TC9 Added WM_COPYDATA and WM_USER queries for scripting.
Of course it requires unpacking. And makes a search much longer in time. Look at antivirus scanners, they all scan archive formats in that way...Balderstrom wrote:I don't believe its possible, without unpacking.
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