Zipcmt is the super-fast batch, zip file comment viewer, and extractor.
- Using a modern PC with the zip files stored on a solid-state drive, zipcmt handles many thousands of archives per second.
- Comments convert to Unicode text for easy viewing, editing, or web hosting.
* comments can also be left as-is in their original CP437 or ISO-8859 text encoding. - Rarely see duplicate comments to avoid those annoying lists of identical site adverts.
- Transfer the source zip file's last modification date over to any saved comments.
- Tailored to both Windows and POSIX terminal platforms.
preview.mp4
zipcmt is a standalone (portable) terminal application and doesn't require installation.
Windows, macOS, FreeBSD, Linux and Linux for ARM
Windows requires Windows 10 or newer, users of Windows 7 and 8 can use zipcmt v1.3.10.
wget https://github.com/bengarrett/zipcmt/releases/latest/download/zipcmt.apk
apk add zipcmt.apkwget https://github.com/bengarrett/zipcmt/releases/latest/download/zipcmt.deb
dpkg -i zipcmt.debwget https://github.com/bengarrett/zipcmt/releases/latest/download/zipcmt.rpm
rpm -i zipcmt.rpmwget https://github.com/bengarrett/zipcmt/releases/latest/download/zipcmt.pkg.tar.zst
pacman -U zipcmt.pkg.tar.zstUnfortunately, newer macOS versions do not permit the running of unsigned terminal applications out of the box. But there is a workaround.
In System Settings, Privacy & Security, Security, toggle Allow applications downloaded from App store and identified developers.
- Use Finder to extract the download for macOS,
zipcmt_macOS.tar.tar.gz - Use Finder to select the extracted
zipcmtbinary. - ^ control-click the binary and choose Open.
- macOS will ask if you are sure you want to open it.
- Confirm by choosing Open, which will open a terminal and run the program.
- After this one-time confirmation, you can run this program within the terminal.
It is highly encouraged that Windows users temporarily disable Virus & threat protection, Real-time protection, or create Windows Security Exclusions for the folders to be scanned before running zipcmt. Otherwise, the hit to performance is amazingly stark!
zipcmt -noprint 'C:\examples\'
This is the time taken with the default Microsoft Defender settings.
Scanned 11331 zip archives and found 412 unique comments, taking 1m38.9398945s
1 minute and 38 seconds to scan 11,000 zip archives.
This is the expected performance on an SSD with a Windows Security Exclusion in place.
Scanned 11331 zip archives and found 412 unique comments, taking 1.593534s
1.6 seconds to scan the same 11,000 zip archives!
zipcmt test/
# ── test/test-with-comment.zip ───────────┐
# This is an example test comment for zipcmt.
#
# Scanned 4 zip archives and found 1 unique commentzipcmt --quiet test/
# This is an example test comment for zipcmt.Linux, macOS, etc.
zipcmt --noprint --save=~ test/
# Scanned 4 zip archives and found 1 unique comment
cat ~/test-with-comment-zipcomment.txt
# This is an example test comment for zipcmt.Windows PowerShell
zipcmt.exe --noprint --save='C:\Users\Ben\Documents' .\test\
# Scanned 4 zip archives and found 1 unique comment
cat 'C:\Users\Ben\Documents\test-with-comment-zipcomment.txt'
# This is an example test comment for zipcmt.Go supports dozens of architectures and operating systems letting zipcmt to be built for most platforms.
# clone this repo
git clone git@github.com:bengarrett/zipcmt.git
# access the repo
cd zipcmt
# target and build the app for the host system
go build
# target and build for Windows 10, 32-bit
env GOOS=windows GOARCH=386 go build
# target and build for OpenBSD
env GOOS=openbsd GOARCH=amd64 go build
# target and build for Linux on MIPS CPUs
env GOOS=linux GOARCH=mips64 go buildReddit user Iron_Slug in r/bbs created a huge online collection of BBS ads, many of which were captured using zipcmt.
The website Defacto2 has a large collection of uncurated BBS ads also captured using zipcmt.
