Viewing ZIP files

Is there an easy way that I'm missing to simply view the contents of a ZIP file, rather than extracting them wholesale? I've got the free version of StuffIt installed for these kinds of chores, but it seems to want to immediately expand the file upon opening it.

Sorry if this has been covered elsewhere, I've searched a bit and can't seem to dig up a similar question.

TIA

cwa107 said:

Is there an easy way that I'm missing to simply view the contents of a ZIP file. . . .

Click to expand...

Don't think so. The preferences don't show anything. Expander is the teaser for Stuffit Deluxe, which allows you to view the files.

Expander's prefs, by the way, offer the choice of deleting the original when its expanded. Long experience with Stuffit taught me to turn that off. With the original deleted and the expanded file corrupt, if only because of a power failure choosing that moment, you're dead in the water.

Brown Study said:

Don't think so. The preferences don't show anything. Expander is the teaser for Stuffit Deluxe, which allows you to view the files.

Expander's prefs, by the way, offer the choice of deleting the original when its expanded. Long experience with Stuffit taught me to turn that off. With the original deleted and the expanded file corrupt, if only because of a power failure choosing that moment, you're dead in the water.

Click to expand...

Good enough, thanks for the explanation. Ugh, I'd rather not shell out the $80 for a compression utility. That's just ridiculous for what is basic functionality for just about any other similar product out there. I'm surprised no one else has introduced a competing product.

Terminal.app to the rescue!

new-host:~/apps to install eventuall (maybe) walkerj$ unzip -v bladerunner.zip

Archive: bladerunner.zip
Length Method Size Ratio Date Time CRC-32 Name
-------- ------ ------- ----- ---- ---- ------ ----
26216 Defl:N 15331 42% 06-13-98 01:19 51274cb7 BLADRMF_.TTF
347 Defl:N 169 51% 06-14-98 22:03 6e2f7694 BR.cnt
19234 Defl:N 10199 47% 06-14-98 22:04 cb5d4455 BR.HLP
494 Defl:N 258 48% 11-09-98 21:31 53fb4ca1 kemosabe.txt
1560 Defl:N 725 54% 09-24-99 10:01 ba8b0dc2 Famous Fonts.txt
-------- ------- --- -------
47851 26682 44% 5 files

It looks better in the terminal, of course. The -v option to unzip will give you a list of what's in the archive.

Thanks for the handy tip, WalkerJ, but I think I found the ultimate solution for my issue:

Found this handy little Zip utility on Apple.com called Zipeg. It easily opens and allows you to view, extract and otherwise manipulate just about any kind of archive.

Check it out.

Hey, cool! Free GUI interface! Like it as I do, sometimes Terminal can be viewed as a tad kludgey amongst the slick UI that Mac OS X graces us with every day.

Downloading....

Neat little app. But it keeps phoning home, the first time for decompression codes. But then it keeps making other connections. I quit it after six or seven, and blocked it with Little Snitch.

Edit: Little Snitch reports it as being JavaApplicationStub.

Brown Study said:

Neat little app. But it keeps phoning home, the first time for decompression codes. But then it keeps making other connections. I quit it after six or seven, and blocked it with Little Snitch.

Edit: Little Snitch reports it as being JavaApplicationStub.

Click to expand...

Interesting. A form of Spyware maybe? Does it run when you block it?

cwa107 said:

Interesting. A form of Spyware maybe? Does it run when you block it?

Click to expand...

Dunno, because it's blocked.

I'm sure it tries. Stuffit Deluxe would phone home each time I use it, too. It claims it's checking for updates. Right.

Edit: Duh. You mean, of course, does it do its job, not does it try to phone when it's blocked. Yeah, it runs fine.

Brown Study said:

Dunno, because it's blocked.

I'm sure it tries. Stuffit Deluxe would phone home each time I use it, too. It claims it's checking for updates. Right.

Edit: Duh. You mean, of course, does it do its job, not does it try to phone when it's blocked. Yeah, it runs fine.

Click to expand...

My guess is that being that it's Java based, much of the traffic is Java phoning home for "updates", which seems pretty typical. Either way, I'm not sure that there's much useful information to glean from my activities in unzipping files and I doubt Apple would have posted it without some degree of quality control, so I'm going to keep it unless I find something better.

I really should buy Little Snitch, because it seems quite handy, I had tried the trial version some time ago and was very pleased with it.