How to create an archive file which unarchives into the current folder

archiveusbzip

At the moment, if I create a TAR or ZIP file foo.tar – containing multiple files and directories – when I double click on the archive it creates a folder foo containing all of the archived items.

Is there a way to have an archive extract itself – when opened from Finder – so that the files are at the same level as the archive was?

I'm trying to distribute an archive which users can use to setup a USB drive with a custom icon etc, however this requires copying hidden files into the USB drive's root, so I can't just get them to "copy/paste from this network directory"

Best Answer

Unless I am mistaken (always a possibility), this behavior is set by the program extracting the archive file, not by the archive file itself.

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How to compress a folder into multiple zip files

Use the -s switch on the zip command in terminal. So if your folder was called FolderName

zip -r -s 64 archive.zip FolderName/

64 is the size of the split (in this case 64Mb).

Use -s to set the split size and create a split archive.  
The size is  given  as  a  number  followed optionally  by  one  
of  k (kB), m (MB), g (GB), or t (TB) (the default is m). [1]

Use zipsplit to split a zip file in to multiple smaller zipfiles. Use the -n switch to set the size of the splits.

[1] http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/zip.1.html

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are you sure that the file is an actual Zip file as you will get this message on a file that has been renamed as .zip when it isnt in fact a Zip file.

The only real way to tell is to use a HEX editor such as 0xED to check the first few bytes are the characters PK.

Best Answer

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