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I have a zip folder structure which is read as a plugin from a server system. I need to edit some text files inside these zip folders, but

  1. extracting
  2. editing
  3. packing

is tedious and error-prone.

  • Does anyone knows an editor that can open files inside zip folders?
  • Extra: Is this editor configurable, so it will treat files with different extensions like a .zip. too?
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  • it looks like at least vi can do it - simply open and edit!
    – wendy_44
    Mar 5, 2011 at 19:55
  • You should be able to simplify this with a bit of scripting, although after reading your question I suspect that might be too much bother for you.
    – John Gardeniers
    Mar 5, 2011 at 21:33

3 Answers 3

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AFAIK, there is no editor which can do this.

While there are a variety of programs which can open files from inside a zip, they generally do this by extracting the file and saving it in a temporary location (on memory or disk). The zip file itself is never changed.

Changing the contents of the file would require the contents of the zip to be extracted, altered, then re-compressed--automating the process you refer to. I'm not aware of any Mac OS editors which do this automation.

The exception is the case where you actually mount the archive as a filesystem, which I believe can be done using FUSE with the fuse-zip extension (see MacFuse for a GUI). But this might be overkill for your needs.

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  • thank you for fuse-zip, i had a look there, but indeed, it seemed to be overkill for such a task ..
    – wendy_44
    Mar 5, 2011 at 19:56
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One program that supports the workflow you're asking for is the open source B1 Free Archiver.

  1. Open the archive with B1
  2. Double click on the file you wanna edit
  3. it will open in your default text editor
  4. make you changes and save
  5. the program will ask you if you want to save the changes
  6. done. (B1 will re-compress the archive in the background)

B1 is Available for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android

PS: It does in the background extract the file to a temp location and re-compresses the archive on change, but from user's perspective, it does basically allow opening files from zip archives and changing them.

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BBEdit 11 and later can now directly open and edit zip files, including files that have different endings, like pptx or docx. You can also add the OOXML Tools add-in to the Chrome browser to do simple edits to zipped files

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  • please provide a link to download the software
    – Luca Gibelli
    Apr 12, 2018 at 17:50
  • Excellent tip! Works great.
    – zmippie
    Jul 23, 2020 at 13:02

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