Archives
Archives open as folders
A double-click on an archive opens it as a read-only folder: zip, jar, tar and its compressed forms (tgz, tar.gz, tbz2, tar.bz2, txz, tar.xz), 7z, rar, cpio, xar and iso. Inside, the path bar, tabs, Quick Look, Open, Copy, drag-out and name search work as in any folder; the sidebar tree shows archives among the folders when Settings ▸ General ▸ "Show archives as folders in the sidebar tree" is on. Open on a file inside an archive extracts a copy to a temporary folder and opens that.
Properties name an archive by its format ("Archive (ZIP)", "Archive (TAR.GZ)") and, inside one, say "read-only". Nothing can be changed inside an archive: New, Rename, Delete and Paste are unavailable there, and plugin commands are disabled unless the plugin says it handles archives.
Extracting
"Extract to Here" in the context menu of an archive unpacks it beside itself; "Extract All…" asks for a folder first. Both show progress with Cancel and are one Undo step. Dragging or copying items out of an archive extracts just those items. Copying a folder out of a 7z or rar archive extracts it in one pass.
Cancelling an extraction stops it and leaves no half-written files. An archive entry the tool could not extract leaves nothing behind that could pass for the real file.
Passwords
A password-protected zip (both the classic ZipCrypto and AES encryption) asks for its password once per session, the first time an entry is opened or extracted. Encrypted 7z and rar archives are reported as unsupported.
What the app refuses
Archives made to escape their folder or to lie about their contents are refused entry by entry, never extracted outside the destination:
- names with
../or an absolute path; - entries whose declared size disagrees with their data, or whose checksum fails;
- truncated archives, and archives whose directory sits past the 64-bit limit (reported as corrupt);
- two entries that would be one file on a case-insensitive disk ("a.txt" and "A.txt"): both are refused rather than one overwriting the other;
- symbolic links inside a zip: listed, but not extracted as files.
Compress
"Compress" in the context menu makes a zip archive beside the selection: "name.zip" for one item (the name without its extension), "Archive.zip" for several; a name already taken gets a number. Cancelling leaves no half-written archive. The app writes zip only.