> Technically speaking, TAR is indexable -- the index is distributed through the archive, at the head of each file. Actually, zip works in the same way as tar.

> Technically speaking, TAR is indexable -- the index is distributed through the archive, at the head of each file. Actually, zip works in the same way as tar. So the central dict is locate at the end of file because it can only be decided after all works finished. And zip actually struct the first part of file with file info before every block in layout similar to tar, so stream decoding is possible. (Although it IS a violation of specification to decode file based on per file info instead of central record in zip standard) > On the flip side, this means that those archive formats can't archive the contents of a filesystem which contains inconsistently encoded (or flat-out nonsense) filenames. It is a good thing IMO because you can't contribute to the problem more now (at the price not able to backup already screwed up disks. Well..., at least old format(tar) still works on old disk)