I tried this program and ended up switching back to 7zip because this program did not work well on a 4k screen (scaling was realllllly bad) and there was a lack of visual feedback for the extraction operation. I felt like I could customize 7z more towards what I needed.
PeaZip – A free cross-platform file archiver utility
21–30 of 33 posts
Re: PeaZip – A free cross-platform file archiver utility
#22I've been using PeaZip for years. Once I discovered that it didn't extract files to a temporary folder, then copy files to the destination from there (resulting in two needless file transfers), I haven't looked back.
I don't know why any program would copy files, let alone twice, to un-archive them, but the usual extract-then-mv pattern is an important feature, usually well-worth the cost of the extra syscall: if the extraction is interrupted, it avoids leaving incomplete files that are indistinguishable from correctly-extracted files. I would consider extracting in place by default a design flaw.
Extract and move is fine, but many programs extract to a temp dir first, and then copy the file. I don't think anyone minds an extra rename (and, as you say, it gets you a sort of atomicity with the extract) but moving a file out of a temp dir can mean doing a full copy, if the destination is not on the same FS.
As a side note: for POSIX OS's, this is why I much prefer the FD based operations. I don't think it quite exists, but I really think the right answer here is to create a deleted file, and then give it a filename. That is, you write the data out to disk, and hardlink it into its final resting place. Atomic, but with no mess of figuring out a temporary name. This is the reverse of how temporary files work, where you create a temp file & then delete it, before writing to it. (Linux allows this; it'll clean up the file when it is closed. It's backed by disk, and since it lacks a name, it can't be inadvertently opened or messed with by other programs. It's a way of saying "give me anonymous disk space".) There's a syscall to create deleted files in one-shot, now, but I don't think there's a way to hardlink them, yet. (Note that you need to still provide either a path, or the FD to a directory, s.t. the OS can determine what FS should back the file, and that you have access to disk at all.)
Re: PeaZip – A free cross-platform file archiver utility
#23I've been using PeaZip for years. Once I discovered that it didn't extract files to a temporary folder, then copy files to the destination from there (resulting in two needless file transfers), I haven't looked back.
I don't know why any program would copy files, let alone twice, to un-archive them, but the usual extract-then-mv pattern is an important feature, usually well-worth the cost of the extra syscall: if the extraction is interrupted, it avoids leaving incomplete files that are indistinguishable from correctly-extracted files. I would consider extracting in place by default a design flaw.
If an SSD is used, would the extract and copy approach cause more wear?
Re: PeaZip – A free cross-platform file archiver utility
#24According to the page: "Read (browse, extract, test) 7z, Google Android's apk, bz, bz2, bzip2, tbz2, tbz, gz, gzip, tgz, tpz, tar, zip, zipx, z01, smzip, arj, cab, chm, chi, chq, chw, hxs, hxi, hxr, hxq, hxw, lit, cpio, deb, lzh, lha, rar, r01, 00, rpm, z, taz, tz, iso, Java (jar, ear, war), pet, pup, pak, pk3, pk4, slp, [Content], xpi, wim, u3p, lzma86, lzma, udf, xar, Apple's dmg, hfs, part1, split, swm, tpz, kmz,…
It is a long list but don't forget that many of those list (Microsoft Office, OpenDocument) are just standard zip files with a different extension.
And containing XML files within the zip, IIRC (need to check).
Re: PeaZip – A free cross-platform file archiver utility
#25I don't know why everyone recommends 7zip when this app is 100x better.
not really, it takes forever to open
Re: PeaZip – A free cross-platform file archiver utility
#26Re: PeaZip – A free cross-platform file archiver utility
#27Peazip is great. I love that there's a portable version--it has come in handy before when I didn't have installation permissions. At the time (not sure if it's still the case now), WinRAR or 7zip didn't seem to have portable versions listed on their homepages and the other sites proclaiming that there are looked shady.
I don’t know how far back you’re going in time with this comment but I’ve used 7zip portable for years: https://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/7-zip_portable
Re: PeaZip – A free cross-platform file archiver utility
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is a long list but don't forget that many of those list (Microsoft Office, OpenDocument) are just standard zip files with a different extension.
And containing XML files within the zip, IIRC (need to check).
This is correct, at least for excel and word (xlsx and docx, respectfully, dont know about the others). And past the zip, theyre both largely terse xml under the hood abiding by a published schema. This is actually pretty convenient and allows for cross platform tools for creating/consuming files. For instance, I like the xlsxwriter Python module for creating xlsx files (no affiliation with the project, but I've used it at a couple of jobs to create some pretty nice spreadsheets, with no need for an excel install on a server). A lot of early Python modules required an Excel install and worked over COM, so on both accounts, Windows only.
Re: PeaZip – A free cross-platform file archiver utility
#29Hmm, needs Zst.
Re: PeaZip – A free cross-platform file archiver utility
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
And containing XML files within the zip, IIRC (need to check).
This is correct, at least for excel and word (xlsx and docx, respectfully, dont know about the others). And past the zip, theyre both largely terse xml under the hood abiding by a published schema. This is actually pretty convenient and allows for cross platform tools for creating/consuming files. For instance, I like the xlsxwriter Python module for creating xlsx files (no affiliation with the project, but I've used…
Yes, good points. I think (but not sure) that the change from MS Office binary file formats (with their issues of being proprietary, undocumented, etc.) to zipped XML formats (for Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.) came at the same time as when they added an "x" to the filename extensions, like changing .doc to .docx, .xls to .xlsx, and so on.
This was also probably around the time when there was that big public hoo-ha about MS XML formats vs. Open Office / Open Document formats. I had read some about it at the time, don't remember the full details.