On Thu, 16 Jun 2011, Cody Loyd wrote:

can PD access files that are found in a ZIP archive? if so.. HOW?

You can use a webpage such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIP_%28file_format%29 to figure out what you need to do to access the files that you want. This only tells you how to read directories and access the file data as-is. It's easy as long as the data is not compressed.

JAR files, for examples, are ZIP files in which compression is disabled. This makes them easier to read.

If you need to decode Deflated files (normal ZIP2 compression used in ZIP files since 1993), that's much harder, but I think that it is something supported by zlib (or else it's very close to be supported by zlib).

For non-compressed zip archives, you may be able to do it all in Pd using either GridFlow's [#in grid, headerless] or using Martin Peach's file-reading tools, together with the usual Pd toolset ([sel], [moses], etc).

For compressed data, the easiest might be to use Shell-commands with either a shell-oriented PKUNZIP.EXE (Windows), or else using InfoZip's /usr/bin/unzip command (Linux or OSX).

I don't know of a direct Pd interface to zlib (alias libz).

| Mathieu Bouchard ---- tél: +1.514.383.3801 ---- Villeray, Montréal, QC