使用.NET在Windows上将许多文件合并为一个ZIP的替代方法

Question

Im looking for methods to combine files including their name and relative path into one single file. A folder disguised as a file. I don't need any compression or encryption. Just the file data including some binary metadata attached to each file.

It would be great if this file was possible to open/inspect/unpack with a standard file browser in Windows such as with regular zip-files.

Yes I could use zip. But I'm researching alternatives and I would prefer a simple method I could implement myself in C#/.NET.

UPDATE

I've researched this some more and came across Microsoft's Structured Storage format. It looked promising at first but it seemes to be an obsolete format, replaced with the Open Package Format. And then I found out about the TAR-format. It seemes to be the most basic format. But I'm not sure yet if I can add any custom metadata to the entries with TAR.

UPDATE

I went with DotNetZip at the end anyway...

Answer 1

Why not use zip? You can use a third party library, like dotnetzip , to make the code easy to write. And, as you mentioned, Windows handles zip files well.

Answer 2

If you have specific reason to search an alternative to ZIP, take a look on virtual file systems, eg. CodeBase File System or our Solid File System . Solid File System lets you add alternate data streams (like in NTFS) or tags (small chunks of binary or text data) to each file or directory. And with OS edition of SolFS you can make the filesystem visible to Windows (including Explorer and third-party applications).

I must admit that while virtual file systems are easy to use (easier than ZIP), they are commercial products (I didn't see free virtual file system implementations yet).