UNZIPSFX(1) General Commands Manual UNZIPSFX(1)
NAME
unzipsfx - self-extracting stub for prepending to ZIP archives
SYNOPSIS
<name of unzipsfx+archive combo> [-cfptuz[ajnoqsCLV$]] [file(s) ...
[-x xfile(s) ...]]
DESCRIPTION
unzipsfx is a modified version of unzip(1) designed to be prepended to
existing ZIP archives in order to form self-extracting archives. In-
stead of taking its first non-flag argument to be the zipfile(s) to be
extracted, unzipsfx seeks itself under the name by which it was invoked
and tests or extracts the contents of the appended archive. Because
the executable stub adds bulk to the archive (the whole purpose of
which is to be as small as possible), a number of the less-vital capa-
bilities in regular unzip have been removed. Among these are the usage
(or help) screen, the listing and diagnostic functions (-l and -v), the
ability to decompress older compression formats (the ``reduce,''
``shrink'' and ``implode'' methods). The ability to extract to a di-
rectory other than the current one can be selected as a compile-time
option, which is now enabled by default since UnZipSFX version 5.5.
Similarly, decryption is supported as a compile-time option but should
be avoided unless the attached archive contains encrypted files. Start-
ing with release 5.5, another compile-time option adds a simple ``run
command after extraction'' feature. This feature is currently incom-
patible with the ``extract to different directory'' feature and remains
disabled by default.
Note that self-extracting archives made with unzipsfx are no more (or
less) portable across different operating systems than is the unzip ex-
ecutable itself. In general a self-extracting archive made on a par-
ticular Unix system, for example, will only self-extract under the same
flavor of Unix. Regular unzip may still be used to extract the embed-
ded archive as with any normal zipfile, although it will generate a
harmless warning about extra bytes at the beginning of the zipfile.
Despite this, however, the self-extracting archive is technically not a
valid ZIP archive, and PKUNZIP may be unable to test or extract it.
This limitation is due to the simplistic manner in which the archive is
created; the internal directory structure is not updated to reflect the
extra bytes prepended to the original zipfile.
ARGUMENTS
[file(s)]
An optional list of archive members to be processed. Regular
expressions (wildcards) similar to those in Unix egrep(1) may be
used to match multiple members. These wildcards may contain:
* matches a sequence of 0 or more characters
? matches exactly 1 character
[...] matches any single character found inside the brackets;
ranges are specified by a beginning character, a hyphen,
and an ending character. If an exclamation point or a
caret (`!' or `^') follows the left bracket, then the
range of characters within the brackets is complemented
(that is, anything except the characters inside the
brackets is considered a match).
(Be sure to quote any character that might otherwise be inter-
preted or modified by the operating system, particularly under
Unix and VMS.)
[-x xfile(s)]
An optional list of archive members to be excluded from process-
ing. Since wildcard characters match directory separators
(`/'), this option may be used to exclude any files that are in
subdirectories. For example, ``foosfx *.[ch] -x */*'' would ex-
tract all C source files in the main directory, but none in any
subdirectories. Without the -x option, all C source files in
all directories within the zipfile would be extracted.
If unzipsfx is compiled with SFX_EXDIR defined, the following option is
also enabled:
[-d exdir]
An optional directory to which to extract files. By default,
all files and subdirectories are recreated in the current direc-
tory; the -d option allows extraction in an arbitrary directory
(always assuming one has permission to write to the directory).
The option and directory may be concatenated without any white
space between them, but note that this may cause normal shell
behavior to be suppressed. In particular, ``-d ~'' (tilde) is
expanded by Unix C shells into the name of the user's home di-
rectory, but ``-d~'' is treated as a literal subdirectory ``~''
of the current directory.
OPTIONS
unzipsfx supports the following unzip(1) options: -c and -p (extract
to standard output/screen), -f and -u (freshen and update existing
files upon extraction), -t (test archive) and -z (print archive com-
ment). All normal listing options (-l, -v and -Z) have been removed,
but the testing option (-t) may be used as a ``poor man's'' listing.
Alternatively, those creating self-extracting archives may wish to in-
clude a short listing in the zipfile comment.
See unzip(1) for a more complete description of these options.
MODIFIERS
unzipsfx currently supports all unzip(1) modifiers: -a (convert text
files), -n (never overwrite), -o (overwrite without prompting), -q (op-
erate quietly), -C (match names case-insensitively), -L (convert upper-
case-OS names to lowercase), -j (junk paths) and -V (retain version
numbers); plus the following operating-system specific options: -X
(restore VMS owner/protection info), -s (convert spaces in filenames to
underscores [DOS, OS/2, NT]) and -$ (restore volume label [DOS, OS/2,
NT, Amiga]).
(Support for regular ASCII text-conversion may be removed in future
versions, since it is simple enough for the archive's creator to ensure
that text files have the appropriate format for the local OS. EBCDIC
conversion will of course continue to be supported since the zipfile
format implies ASCII storage of text files.)
See unzip(1) for a more complete description of these modifiers.
ENVIRONMENT OPTIONS
unzipsfx uses the same environment variables as unzip(1) does, although
this is likely to be an issue only for the person creating and testing
the self-extracting archive. See unzip(1) for details.
DECRYPTION
Decryption is supported exactly as in unzip(1); that is, interactively
with a non-echoing prompt for the password(s). See unzip(1) for de-
tails. Once again, note that if the archive has no encrypted files
there is no reason to use a version of unzipsfx with decryption sup-
port; that only adds to the size of the archive.
AUTORUN COMMAND
When unzipsfx was compiled with CHEAP_SFX_AUTORUN defined, a simple
``command autorun'' feature is supported. You may enter a command into
the Zip archive comment, using the following format:
$AUTORUN$>[command line string]
When unzipsfx recognizes the ``$AUTORUN$>'' token at the beginning of
the Zip archive comment, the remainder of the first line of the comment
(until the first newline character) is passed as a shell command to the
operating system using the C rtl ``system'' function. Before executing
the command, unzipsfx displays the command on the console and prompts
the user for confirmation. When the user has switched off prompting by
specifying the -q option, autorun commands are never executed.
In case the archive comment contains additional lines of text, the re-
mainder of the archive comment following the first line is displayed
normally, unless quiet operation was requested by supplying a -q op-
tion.
EXAMPLES
To create a self-extracting archive letters from a regular zipfile let-
ters.zip and change the new archive's permissions to be world-exe-
cutable under Unix:
cat unzipsfx letters.zip > letters
chmod 755 letters
zip -A letters
To create the same archive under MS-DOS, OS/2 or NT (note the use of
the /b [binary] option to the copy command):
copy /b unzipsfx.exe+letters.zip letters.exe
zip -A letters.exe
Under VMS:
copy unzipsfx.exe,letters.zip letters.exe
letters == "$currentdisk:[currentdir]letters.exe"
zip -A letters.exe
(The VMS append command may also be used. The second command installs
the new program as a ``foreign command'' capable of taking arguments.
The third line assumes that Zip is already installed as a foreign com-
mand.) Under AmigaDOS:
MakeSFX letters letters.zip UnZipSFX
(MakeSFX is included with the UnZip source distribution and with Amiga
binary distributions. ``zip -A'' doesn't work on Amiga self-extracting
archives.) To test (or list) the newly created self-extracting
archive:
letters -t
To test letters quietly, printing only a summary message indicating
whether the archive is OK or not:
letters -tqq
To extract the complete contents into the current directory, recreating
all files and subdirectories as necessary:
letters
To extract all *.txt files (in Unix quote the `*'):
letters *.txt
To extract everything except the *.txt files:
letters -x *.txt
To extract only the README file to standard output (the screen):
letters -c README
To print only the zipfile comment:
letters -z
LIMITATIONS
The principle and fundamental limitation of unzipsfx is that it is not
portable across architectures or operating systems, and therefore nei-
ther are the resulting archives. For some architectures there is lim-
ited portability, however (e.g., between some flavors of Intel-based
Unix).
Another problem with the current implementation is that any archive
with ``junk'' prepended to the beginning technically is no longer a
zipfile (unless zip(1) is used to adjust the zipfile offsets appropri-
ately, as noted above). unzip(1) takes note of the prepended bytes and
ignores them since some file-transfer protocols, notably MacBinary, are
also known to prepend junk. But PKWARE's archiver suite may not be
able to deal with the modified archive unless its offsets have been ad-
justed.
unzipsfx has no knowledge of the user's PATH, so in general an archive
must either be in the current directory when it is invoked, or else a
full or relative path must be given. If a user attempts to extract the
archive from a directory in the PATH other than the current one, un-
zipsfx will print a warning to the effect, ``can't find myself.'' This
is always true under Unix and may be true in some cases under MS-DOS,
depending on the compiler used (Microsoft C fully qualifies the program
name, but other compilers may not). Under OS/2 and NT there are oper-
ating-system calls available that provide the full path name, so the
archive may be invoked from anywhere in the user's path. The situation
is not known for AmigaDOS, Atari TOS, MacOS, etc.
As noted above, a number of the normal unzip(1) functions have been re-
moved in order to make unzipsfx smaller: usage and diagnostic info,
listing functions and extraction to other directories. Also, only
stored and deflated files are supported. The latter limitation is
mainly relevant to those who create SFX archives, however.
VMS users must know how to set up self-extracting archives as foreign
commands in order to use any of unzipsfx's options. This is not neces-
sary for simple extraction, but the command to do so then becomes,
e.g., ``run letters'' (to continue the examples given above).
unzipsfx on the Amiga requires the use of a special program, MakeSFX,
in order to create working self-extracting archives; simple concatena-
tion does not work. (For technically oriented users, the attached
archive is defined as a ``debug hunk.'') There may be compatibility
problems between the ROM levels of older Amigas and newer ones.
All current bugs in unzip(1) exist in unzipsfx as well.
DIAGNOSTICS
unzipsfx's exit status (error level) is identical to that of unzip(1);
see the corresponding man page.
SEE ALSO
funzip(1), unzip(1), zip(1), zipcloak(1), zipgrep(1), zipinfo(1), zip-
note(1), zipsplit(1)
URL
The Info-ZIP home page is currently at
http://www.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/
or
ftp://ftp.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/ .
AUTHORS
Greg Roelofs was responsible for the basic modifications to UnZip nec-
essary to create UnZipSFX. See unzip(1) for the current list of Zip-
Bugs authors, or the file CONTRIBS in the UnZip source distribution for
the full list of Info-ZIP contributors.
Info-ZIP 20 April 2009 (v6.0) UNZIPSFX(1)
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