Re: visiting large zip file

[Eli Zaretskii]

On 3 Feb 2003, Stefan Monnier <foo@acm.com> wrote:

> > Actually, the Emacs mode that supports operations on *.zip files
> > _does_ read the whole zip file into a buffer; hence the problem.
> 
> But I think Kin's point still holds: Emacs does not *need* to read
> the file, since it uses external tools to extract/list/...

I'm guessing that whoever wrote arc-mode tried to avoid external tools as 
much as they could, since some of the wide-spread tools are not free 
software, and the free ones might not be installed.  Also, IIRC arc-mode 
allows you to edit the file's attributes in ways that might be 
impossible with external tools.

Anyway, if someone wants to rewrite those parts of arc-mode to use 
external tools, or perhaps fall back on that if the file's size is too 
large for Emacs, I'm sure that would be a welcome addition.

> Contrary to tar-mode, for example.

tar-mode _could_ do the same (i.e. use the external `tar' program).