Is there a way to search for a string within a file(s) within a zipped folder WITHOUT unzipping the files?
My situation is I have over 1 million files zipped by months of the year. For example 2008_01, 2008_02, etc. I need to extract/unzip only the files with specific serial numbers within the files.
The only thing I can find is unzipping the data to a temporary location to perform that search, but it takes me 45-60 minutes just to unzip the data manually. So I assume the code would take just as long to perform that task, plus I don't have that much available space.
Please Help.
Unfortunately, there isn't a way to do this. The zip format maintains an uncompressed manifest that shows file names and directory structure, but the contents of the files themselves are compressed, and therefore any string inside a file won't match your search until the file is decompressed.
This same limitation exists with just about any general-purpose file compression format (7zip, gzip, rar, etc.). You're essentially reclaiming disk space at the expense of CPU cycles.