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Originally Posted by cassidym
Anyway, when you say 'create a directory' is that the same as creating a folder on the C drive?
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Yes. A folder is another name for a directory.
Windows uses a tree structure to organize files. The top level of your C: deive is called the "root" directory. Other directories branch off of that, and directories can contain directories. Windows itself lives under C:\Windows and directories beneath it. Your programs mostly live in C:\Program Files and directories below that. Your My Documents folder probably lives in C:\Documents and Settings\<userid>\My Documents\, where <userid> id the user name you use to log onto Windows. The stuff on your desktop is a folder as well, living in C:\C:\Documents and Settings\<userid>\Desktop. Some things live in "hidden" directories which aren't shown by default in Windows Explorer.
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Also, of all the actions available listed in the Zip window, none of them are labeled 'Unzip'. Is this what Open means?
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Yes, it is.
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Sorry to be so dimwitted. Am new to Zip
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Zip is a standard. The original Zip program was a DOS program called PKZip, developed by the late Phil Katz of PKWare. Phil was creating a replacement for the then dominant archive utility called ARC, which would be faster, provide greater compression, and have more features. Phil explicitly dedicated the format used for Zip files to the public domain, and a number of developers have created programs to create and extract Zip archives. Microsoft includes the ability to extract the contents of Zip files in XP/Vista, calling it Zip folders.
There are an assortment of other archive types around. One popular in Europe is an archive format called RAR, created by a Russian developer named Eugene Rorshal. RAR files offer slightly better compression and special features intended for multimedia. The are popular in binary newsgroups, because they contain support for multi-part archives, and have enhanced recovery information, making it more likely that you can use a RAR file originally delivered in multiple posts to a binary newsgroup if pieces got damaged or never made it to your news server.
I don't use Zip Folders in Windows. I prefer an actual archive utility. I'm partial to a free, open source archiver called 7-Zip. 7-Zip can create files in its own 7z format, as well as Zip, Gzip, and TAR files (the latter widely used on Unix/Linux). It can extract from a number of archive formats, including 7z, Zip, Gzip, TAR, RAR, CAB, ARJ, and LZH files. Go to
http://www.7zip.org for info and downloads.
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Dennis