Why Do Archive Unpakers For Windows Insist On...

[Pleng]

The title says it all. Is there any technical reason, other than to p*ss off people who might want to extract large volumes of data all at once, that programs such as winRAR and 7-zip feel the need to extract files to some temporary location and THEN copy the files from the temporary location to the required location.

I have about 4Gb of space on my C drive, and about 120Gb free on V:

Unpacking a 6Gb VM image archive is a total farce!

 

[Reo]

The title says it all. Is there any technical reason, other than to p*ss off people who might want to extract large volumes of data all at once, that programs such as winRAR and 7-zip feel the need to extract files to some temporary location and THEN copy the files from the temporary location to the required location.

I have about 4Gb of space on my C drive, and about 120Gb free on V:

Unpacking a 6Gb VM image archive is a total farce!

Use the extract button rather than select and drag.

 

[Pleng]

wow really? Not that I have any further call to do it right now but I shall certainly remember that one. I'm sure there's some technical reason for it being that way, but it's just irritating!

 

[Javacat]

I looked into that a few months ago and it's to do with Explorer's API. I think it's something like when you drag and drop somewhere, the app your dragging from (eg, 7zip) doesn't get told the actual file location. Instead 7zip just gets told the memory address of that explorer window. 7zip then extracts the files to a temporary location and then passes on the copy command and file location of the temporary files to explorer. Explorer then copies the files, tells 7zip when it's done and 7zip deletes the temp files.

Or something like that, if it makes sense


I remember some people coming up with theories on the 7zip forum on how to get around not being told the target address, by using some funny hax but I don't think anything came of it.