If a .zip file contains all of the information of the original, just in less space, why does it have to be unzipped to access any of it?

Question

If a .zip file contains all of the information of the original, just in less space, why does it have to be unzipped to access any of it?

In: 1276

Answer 1

It doesn’t have to be unzipped to access any of it. You can read the footer where the index and metadata are stored, and use it to start reading any of the entries out very easily. Entries can be compressed or uncompressed, or a mix of both within the same archive. It’s not hard to write a program that can read out of a zip file without extracting all of it!