Zip file comparision.

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clwilson
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Joined: Sat May 15, 2004 4:54 pm

Zip file comparision.

Post by clwilson »

I realize that a detailed zip file comparison would be a rather complicated thing to do but I think a virtual file comparision would be relatively simple. Instead of unzipping the two files to some temp directories one could extract the file and directory info from the files and display that. The info includes CRC values for each file that could be used to decide if the files are identical or not. It is not perfect but could handle most situations. We package internal releases in zip files, reusing the same name for each release on a nearly daily basis. Deveopers and QA use these files for testing. Later it is sometimes a pain to go back and see if the files are the same and if not just what files have changed. Sometimes only one file is different but that makes the whole zip file different.
Keep up the good work. By the way I really like the "Select first" and "Compare to" lines you added to the windows context menu. I use it a lot.
Chuck Wilson
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psguru
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Post by psguru »

I understand your need but implementing your suggestion will not solve the whole "Compare zip files as folders" problem. I think that it's more likely that the whole feature will be implemented (yes, by extracting files to a temp directory) rather than getting CRCs of archived files (which will still require adding de-compression support) and then comparing them. On the other hand, extracting files to a temp folder is usually one click away (assuming that you use WinZip or WinRAR or some other shell-integrated archiver).
psguru
PrestoSoft
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