Re: [Bug-wget] [Bug-Wget] Issues with Metalink support

[Steven M. Schweda]

   I havan't been following this thread closely, but the following
statement caught my eye:

> Even utilities like winzip and 7zip will extract file to the user's tmp
> dir before copying or moving them into the final location.

   Really?  I can't speak for those programs, but I can say that
Info-ZIP UnZip definitely does not use "the user's tmp dir" when
extracting an archive member.  Extraction is done directly to the actual
destination directory.

   When creating an archive, Info-ZIP Zip does create a temporary
archive file, but it normally uses the actual destination directory for
this temporary archive file, and then renames it to the user-specified
name if it's created successfully.  With Zip, a user can use the
-b/--temp-path option to specify explicitly a different temporary
archive directory, and then Zip will do a copy+delete operation if a
rename operation fails.  However, this is useful only if the archive
destination is something like a WORM drive, where a rename operation is
not available.  In general, a rename operation won't work between
devices, and copy+delete is much slower than rename, so using a
different directory for the temporary archive is generally a bad idea.

   In some cases, on some operating systems (VMS, for example), UnZip
can pre-allocate disk space when extracting an archive member.  It's
not generally done, because the methods used tend to be OS-specific.

   I'll let you decide what Wget should be doing, but I'd be careful
about faulty analogies to other programs.

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   Steven M. Schweda               address@hidden
   382 South Warwick Street        (+1) 651-699-9818
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