Jack Stein,

07-Sep-99 07:45:37, Jack Stein wrote to Paul Marwick
 JS> Paul Marwick wrote in a message to Jack Stein:
          Subject: File Managers

 JS>> Which file manager handles more self-extracting archives?  Most
 JS>> file managers don't handle them at all, in fact most don't handle
 JS>> regular archives let alone self-extracting ones.

 PM>> In this day and age, I would reject _any_ file manager which
 PM>> doesn't handle archived files.

 JS> Me too.

 PM>> As to which handle self-extracting archives, FC/2 does a good
 PM>> job, and InspectA does a reasonable job (apart from the fact that
 PM>> a number of self-extractors will cause InspectA to fail). OS/2
 PM>> Commander claims to be able to read sel-extractors (pressing
 PM>> CTRL-A is suppoed to do it), but I've so far found only one out
 PM>> of dozens that I've tried that it can read. All of them could be
 PM>> read by FC/2.

 JS> OS2C claims to handle ZIP, ARJ and LHZ self-extracting archives,
 JS> and it does, perfectly.  Which other ones does FC/2 handle

--- Extract FC.INF --- 
File Commander/2 provides support for archive files (ZIP, ARJ, LZH, RAR and
ACE types are currently supported) that makes these files behave in a similar
way to normal subdirectories.  To view the contents of an archive you simply
press ENTER when the cursor is located on the archive file.  It's possible to
navigate any subdirectories inside the archive just as you would a normal
directory tree.

When a panel is showing the contents of an archive its top line, showing the
current path, changes colour so you won't forget that you're not looking at a
real subdirectory.  While the majority of functions are available inside an
archive, some restrictions do apply.

*  Copying files into an archive may only be done when the destination is the
   root directory of the archive. 
*  It's not possible to change the name of a file while copying it from an
   archive. 
*  Making a directory (F7) is not supported. 
*  Changing Date/Time, Attributes or File Case is not supported. 
*  Making an object isn't supported (wouldn't make any sense anyway) 
*  File Find isn't able to search into archives (this may change in later
   versions). 
*  Directories don't show up on the tree. 
*  Open WPS window obviously can't work. 
    

After reading all that you may be wondering what does work.  The answer (as
far as I'm aware) is everything else. This includes, but is not limited to:

*  copy/move files out of archive (extracting) even from subdirs in archive. 
*  copy/move files into archive (compress) but only into archive's root. 
*  View file in archive. 
*  Edit file in archive. 
*  Delete files from inside archive. 
*  Enter another archive (that is an archive inside an archive). 
*  Ctrl-Q on directory inside archive. 
*  If you use a ! on the command line or in a user menu function, FC/2
   automatically extracts the current file into a temporary directory and
   substitutes the full path of the temporary file for the '!'. 
*  If you press ENTER on a file that is an executable or is associated with a
   program, it will be extracted temporarily to allow it to be used. Only the
   one file is extracted though so if other files in the archive are required
   (EG DLLs) then it won't work as you intend. 
*  Self-extracting archives can be entered by using Ctrl-PageDown. As the file
   is an executable, FC/2's normal reaction is to run it if you press ENTER. 
    

You can configure the way FC/2 calls archiver programs in fc.ini under the
section headings [Archiver:xxx] where xxx is the archive type. The following
settings are provided:

Compress  Command used to add files to an archiver or create a new archive.

CompressListfileSwitch  If the archiver given in Compress supports a list
file as input, this is the prefix used to specify that the following name is
a list file.

Extract  Command used to extract files/directories when using F5 or F6.

ExtractWithoutPath  Command used to extract a single file without any
subdirectories. Used by F3-View and when pressing ENTER to execute.

ExtractListfileSwitch  Same as CompressListfileSwitch but for Extract
command.

Delete  Command used to delete files/directories with F8-Delete

CompressDirSpec  Configures the way directories are given to the compressing
archive program so that the archiver will include a whole directory tree.
A ! character represents the directory name. Most archivers require a suffix
of \*.

ExtractDirSpec  As above but for extracting from an archive.

--- End Quote ---

     Thanks and Good Luck,        Andy Roberts
                                  andy@shentel.net
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