How to update one file in a zip archive

Question

Is it possible to replace a file in a zip file without unzipping deleting the old file adding the new file and rezipping it back   Reason is I have a zip file which is really big there is one xml inside the zip file that I have to update sometimes   Unzipping the zip and rezipping it takes a long time   So I d like to just be able to replace the one xml inside the zip through a script  I already have that checks for updates on the xml I have   So is it possible to just replace the one xml without unzipping and rezipping    Sorry i would use the zip command to do things like that but problem is the script is actually for an android phone and zip is not a command i can use unfortunately sorry i left that out  I would have used zip definately if i could but i only have unzip for droid and then there is tar in busybox but tar doesn t do what i need

User · Answer

I know this is old question  but I wanted to do the same  Update a file in  zip archive  And none of the above answers really helped me   Here is what I did  Created temp directory abc  Copied file zip to abc and extracted the file in that directory  I edited the file I wanted to edit  Then while being in abc  ran the following command   user host   temp abc   zip -u file zip updating  content js   stored 0   updating  content js moduleConfig js  deflated 69     -u switch will look for changed new files and will add to the zip archive

User · Answer

From zip 1       When given the name of an existing zip archive  zip will replace identically named entries in the zip archive or add entries for new names    So just use the zip command as you normally would to create a new  zip file containing only that one file  except the  zip filename you specify will be the existing archive

User · Answer

yes its possible   on linux based systems just install zip and you can call it in the command line  have a look at the manpage  http   linux die net man 1 zip  but in my personal experience  if possible and compression is not so important  this works better with plain tar files and tar

User · Answer

I ve found the Linux zip file to be cumbersome for replacing a single file in a zip  The jar utility from the Java Development Kit may be easier  Consider the common task of updating WEB web xml in a JAR file  which is just a zip file    jar -uf path to myapp jar -C path to dir WEB-INF web xml   Here  path to dir is the path to a directory containing the WEB-INF directory  which in turn contains web xml

User · Answer

From the side of ZIP archive structure - you can update zip file without recompressing it  you will just need to skip all files which are prior of the file you need to replace  then put your updated file  and then the rest of the files  And finally you ll need to put the updated centeral directory structure  However  I doubt that most common tools would allow you to make this

User · Answer

7zip  7za  can be used for adding updating files directories nicely   Example   Replacing  regardless of file date  the MANIFEST MF file in a JAR file  The  source META-INF directory contains the MANIFEST MF file that you want to put into the jar  zip    7za a  tmp file jar  source META-INF    Only update  does not replace the target if the source is older   7za u  tmp file jar  source META-INF

User · Answer

Use the update flag  -u  Example      zip -ur existing zip myFolder   This command will compress and add myFolder  and it s contents  to the existing zip     Advanced Usage   The update flag actually compares the incoming files against the existing ones and will either add new files  or update existing ones   Therefore  if you want to add update a specific subdirectory within the zip file  just update the source as desired  and then re-zip the entire source with the -u flag   Only the changed files will be zipped   If you don t have access to the source files  you can unzip the zip file  then update the desired files  and then re-zip with the -u flag   Again  only the changed files will be zipped   Example   Original Source Structure   ParentDir  -- file1 txt  -- file2 txt  -- ChildDir       -- file3 txt       -- Logs            -- logs1 txt            -- logs2 txt            -- logs3 txt   Updated Source Structure   ParentDir  -- file1 txt  -- file2 txt  -- ChildDir       -- file3 txt       -- Logs            -- logs1 txt            -- logs2 txt            -- logs3 txt             -- logs4 txt  lt-- NEW FILE    Usage    zip -ur existing zip ParentDir    updating  ParentDir ChildDir Logs  stored 0       adding  ParentDir ChildDir Logs logs4 txt  stored 96

User · Answer

You can use  zip -u file zip path file to update

User · Answer

Try the following   zip  zipfile   file to update     An example     zip test zip test test txt updating  test test txt  stored 0

User · Answer

There is also the -f option that will freshen the zip file  It can be used to update ALL files which have been updated since the zip was generated  assuming they are in the same place within the tree structure within the zip file    If your file is named  myfiles myzip zip all you have to do is  zip -f  myfiles myzip zip

[bash] How to update one file in a zip archive

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