On copy ("Confirm File Replace" box), show file "Desc:" information for files in zip files, instead of "<unknown>"

On copy ("Confirm File Replace" box), show file "Desc:" information for files in zip files, instead of "".

Is there any way to set this up? I'm willing to wait a little bit of extra time (my files are small) for it to unzip the specific file in the background to gather this info from it.

This comes up a lot for me. Usually I'm copying a file out of a zip file over a version of that file that's not in a zip file. I'd like to be able to see the file details of the zipped file (usually the DLL's version number).

Thanks!

Here's a pic of the Confirm File Replace box showing "" for a DLL file being copied out of a zip over a non-zipped DLL of the same name.

I'm using Directory Opus 11.

The description will be shown for some file types, but not others.

It works for things where the thing which generates the description can cope with a file stream for the virtual file that is inside the archive. (They also typically only need to read a small amount of the start of the file, not all the way to the end of it.)

DLL version information is calculated via the Windows resource APIs, which I think only work on real files, not virtual file streams. For it to work we would have to extract the file to the temp dir and then look at that, which could take a long time in some situations (e.g. you wouldn't want it to happen with a 4GB movie file).

If you're copying DLLs from small archives a lot, it might make sense to extract the zip to temp and then move the temp files over. It should be possible to make a button which does both from a single click. If it's not just DLLs and the archive is quite large then my idea may be less suitable.

Thanks for your reply. Any chance of having an option such as that added some day? It's what I had in mind when I wrote this in my original post:

I'll consider a button that auto-extracts zips, but I prefer to have this abstracted. I really like the frictionlessness of being able to jump right into a zip file with Dopus. Hitting a button to unzip before I "jump into it" would add friction and spoil the magic a bit.

Possibly in the future as part of other ideas for the confirmation dialogs. It won't be in the very near future as we are more or less feature-complete for Opus 12 (although not all features are public yet).

Thanks. I'm in this for the long haul. Looking forward to this, but it's not a big rush.

This is still something I think would be a terrific Opus improvement. It seems like people juggling zipped DLL and EXE files a lot would really like this.

Here's where I run into this the most: Some old version of my company's software is in a zip file. I want to manually install that old version by pulling a few files out of the zip file into my installation directory. When overwriting each file of the same name which is already installed, Opus prompts me to overwrite the EXEs or DLL. I'd really like to get the version # info right from that "Confirm File Replace" box for the zipped EXE or DLL. I totally don't mind waiting a moment for the EXE or DLL file to be extracted in the background so we can get the version property from it. In my case, these DLL and EXE files are small (400KB on the large end) and the zip files aren't very large either so I don't expect it would add much time.

Would it make sense to extract the zip to a temp directory first, then copy the results over? You could make a button which automates the whole process.

Thanks for your question and care, Leo.

It wouldn't work for me, but I realize how personal that is. Being able to treat the zip files like a folder is a wonderful abstraction for me which I depend upon (use a lot).

I'd rather copy the file and then right-click on it and choose my "Beyond Compare" item which I defined in "Settings | File Types | All files | {Edit}". ([url]How to enhance "Confirm File Replace" Dialog?]) I'd prefer to not have to do those additional two clicks (right-click and then left-click to choose Beyond Compare menu item) and then an {Esc} to close Beyond Compare in cases where all I need is the version # of the EXE/DLL in the zip file.

It seems to me that being able to get these zipped EXE/DLL file details right in the "Confirm File Replace" box is in keeping with the seamlessness of so many other Opus aspects. And I'd certainly benefit from that seamlessness.

Leo, I'll try this from a button and see. It still seems to me that this should be an option. However, I realized I can save some careful clicks if I use a Copy Files button instead of right-click, drag, choose "Copy..." from the menu.

I created a plain Copy Files button today. Next, I need to make a custom button with these characteristics:

Copy selected files and folders to the other lister. Disable button if no files/folders are selected.
If file/folder is in zip archive, unzip first and then copy them from unzip's temp location.
Clean up unzipped files/folders after the copy.

If copying a zipped folder, I do care about maintaining directory structure below it.

If copying a file, I don't think I care about recreating the directory structure above it in the destination lister.

Maybe somebody has already created such a button. I don't know if I should post this or try to dig into it myself first.