I don't think that's relevant - in a sense the ordering information is only required because using individual files has otherwise destroyed some information (by

I don't think that's relevant - in a sense the ordering information is only required because using individual files has otherwise destroyed some information (by allowing reordering within the output data). The same process would work with a single stream input to the decompressor, as long as the length of each block where an additional '5' must be output is available - the list of file sizes - so that's where the additional information is stashed.