On Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:16:34 -0700, Scott David Daniels wrote: >>> Do you mean like a zip or tar file? >>> >>> http://docs.python.org/library/zipfile.htmlhttp://docs.python.org/library/tarfile.html >>> >> >> I had no idea you could access a single file from a ZIP or TAR without >> explicitly extracting it somewhere. Thanks. > > You will find the zip format works better if you are compressing. The > zipfile compression is per file in the archive, rather than applied to > the entire archive (as in tarfile). The results of the tar format > decision is that extracting the last file in a .tgz (.tar.gz) or > .tar.bz2 (sometimes called .tbz) requires the expansion of the entire > archive, while extraction on a .zip is reposition, read, and possibly > expand.
Even without compression, the tar format is ill-suited to random access. If you can choose the format, use a zip file. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list