Compressing archiver that lists contents?

TidBITS Talk
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Is there any archive utility that will display an archive file’s contents? Suppose you have several dozen archives, and each of this contains a few dozen phone recordings. Without a list, you’d have to go uncompress archives one by one to find just one recording. But a list would let you scan the archives and find the one that has that one recording. Even better, you could extract one file at a time without uncompressing the whole archive.

Is there any such tool? It’s been years since I’ve looked for a new compressor, so this might be standard by now.

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I haven’t looked for GUI archiver tools for a long time, but if you are comfortable with the command line, macOS include the Info-ZIP utilities for accessing zip files.

The key utilities in this suite are zip, unzip and zipinfo. Run any of them without parameters to get a quick summary of the options or type man followed by the command (e.g. man zip or man unzip) to view the manual page.

To view the contents of a zip file, any of these should get the job done:

  • zipinfo filename
    This is my preferred mechanism:
    $ zipinfo bab5_station_decals.zip 
Archive:  bab5_station_decals.zip
Zip file size: 1631057 bytes, number of entries: 3
-rw----     2.0 fat  1602699 b- defN 01-Jul-02 00:01 b5_decals_forStarshipModeler.jpg
-rw----     2.0 fat    95726 b- defN 01-Jul-02 00:01 DecalPlacement.jpg
-rw----     2.0 fat     6874 b- defN 01-Jul-02 00:01 scicloneBanner.gif
3 files, 1705299 bytes uncompressed, 1630671 bytes compressed:  4.4%
  • unzip -l filename
    This is a basic listing of the contents:
    $ unzip -l bab5_station_decals.zip 
Archive:  bab5_station_decals.zip
  Length      Date    Time    Name
---------  ---------- -----   ----
  1602699  07-02-2001 00:01   b5_decals_forStarshipModeler.jpg
    95726  07-02-2001 00:01   DecalPlacement.jpg
     6874  07-02-2001 00:01   scicloneBanner.gif
---------                     -------
  1705299                     3 files
  • unzip -lv filename
    The -v (verbose) option shows more information about the files:
    $ unzip -lv bab5_station_decals.zip
Archive:  bab5_station_decals.zip
 Length   Method    Size  Cmpr    Date    Time   CRC-32   Name
--------  ------  ------- ---- ---------- ----- --------  ----
 1602699  Defl:N  1533264   4% 07-02-2001 00:01 721757d4  b5_decals_forStarshipModeler.jpg
   95726  Defl:N    90698   5% 07-02-2001 00:01 d500680b  DecalPlacement.jpg
    6874  Defl:N     6709   2% 07-02-2001 00:01 e6c8e1ed  scicloneBanner.gif
--------          -------  ---                            -------
 1705299          1630671   4%                            3 files

The nice thing about command-line tools is that they are easily scriptable. So you can, with a minimal amount of work, run them against a directory tree full of files, filtering the output for the filename(s) you care about.

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Have you tried right-clicking on an archive and selecting “Quick Look”? I just did so on a .zip archive and a list of files popped up.

Also for Installer packages, this utility is useful:

(I’ve had Suspicious Package on my Mac for years and haven’t ever noticed any ill effects or problems caused by it.)

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Either you installed third-party software, or this is new for macOS Sequoia. On my system (running Sonoma 14.6.1), quick-look on a Zip file just shows the archive’s name, icon, size and date.

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I’m on Ventura. In any case, perhaps the Quick Look list is related to having Suspcious Package installed since you aren’t seeing the list.

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If you just want to take a peek inside, you can use QuickLook thanks to this free add-on

https://macitbetter.com/BetterZip-Quick-Look-Generator/

image
image948×640 106 KB

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@gingerbeardman helped me figure out why Quick Look generates a list of files in .zip archives on my machine. A very long time ago, I put WinZip Mac on my computer. One of WinZip’s features is enhancing Quick Look just like BetterZip.

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I use Path Finder for this purpose (both compress/decompress and viewing contents), but if you don’t already use Path Finder, it’s not worth paying for just for that when there are free options for managing archives.

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Hmm, interesting stuff here, including Info-Zip. The last time I fooled with command lines was years ago. But what the heck, I’ll give it a try. Thanks, everyone.

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I just did a right click in Finder and ‘Get Info’ provided the list of enclosed files

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BetterZip

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BetterZip 5 is good! I had forgotten that I had it, mostly because I was too lazy to use it well in favor of simpler apps. But upon second glance, it actually fits the bill completely. Thanks, Gordon Meyer.

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Show Info does not work for me with Sonoma. Same for Quickview. So you might have other extensions/apps in play.
Same for Mojave on an Intel iMac.