Hello,

is it possible to browse the content of a ZIP (or even 7-zip) archive with UltraEdit and open/edit files right within the archive?
I can't find this option in UltraEdit anywhere and Google did not reveal any solutions either.

Cheers, Jörg.

UltraEdit as a text editor has no support for editing files inside an archive of any type.

However, in many applications supporting ZIP, RAR or other archives it is possible to configure an editor which is called for editing the file inside the archive. My favorite file manager Total Commander and my favorite packer tool WinRAR support this.

Both unpack the file to edit to temp folder, start UltraEdit for editing the text file, ask the user after saving the modified file, if the archive should be updated with the modified file, and if the user confirms this question with YES, the archive is updated with the modified file and the file is deleted from temp folder.

Yes, Mofi, you are correct. This can be done with most utilities. 7zip for example supports this. But with 7zip, you must close the editor before it prompts you to update the archive. Since I keep UEStudio open all day, this is rather counterproductive for me. Also, if UEStudio is already open, I get an error message stating that "C:\path\to\temp\file\for\editing contains an incorrect path."

There has to be a better way. I've been unzipping, editing, then updating the archives manually myself, because of the inconvenience of having to have my editor closed before and after.

I tried setting up 7zip to launch a new instance of UEStudio by using the /fni parameter, but if any parameters are specified 7zip reports the error, "Cannot start editor." If anyone else has been successful with this, I'd love to know how. (With 7zip.)

This is quite frustrating, because I prefer to use 7zip, because I primarily work with 7z files on a daily basis. Not the fault of UE/UEStudio here, but the fault of 7zip, unfortunately, and their lack of support for using command line switches with an editor.

I totally agree to rhapdog and I have witnessed exactly the same problems with 7zip. But even if I would use Winrar the additional confirmation dialogs after editing and saving the temp file in UE would be annoying and risky to overlook.
I enjoy UE's capability to open files on remote machines using FTP and so I actually thought that editing within archives would be possible too (felt like a somewhat similar feature to me).
There are many circumstances where editing within archives would be helpful and needed. My current scenario is to establish an automated file sync between Windows and Android using dropbox, but with an additional layer of file encryption (preferably AES 256) on top of it. A password protected 7zip archive would offer this possibility but I need the editors on both sides to support unpacking and repacking the content of the archive on the fly.

I've been looking at the 7zip support forums. It seems this is a problem with 7zip sending any file to any external editor. There was a report about it concerning a word document (*.doc) not able to open if Word was already open.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/sevenzi ... ic/4857956

Looks like in the answer given, they aren't keen on trying to fix it because they say it's "too hard." Someone in that thread suggested the proper way to fix the issue where it would work for us, but it seemed to be ignored "until a better solution can be found" even though a better solution was offered.

They don't get paid, so they aren't worried about fixing things.

Mofi, does WinRAR have that issue? Or does it work properly? Perhaps a company that offers an archiver for a price will make sure the features are done properly, not sure.

Well, I use UEStudio for working with projects and UltraEdit for quick editing text files of any type. Therefore I have checked the configuration setting Allow multiple instances in UltraEdit resulting in opening always a new instance when double clicking on a file within an archive opened by WinRAR for viewing or editing. However, for being able to answer your questions, I unchecked this setting of UltraEdit, closed UltraEdit to force update of uedit32.ini and started UltraEdit again with opening a file on hard disk.


WinRAR

WinRAR has a configuration dialog titled Viewer. It can be configured in this dialog if double clicking on a file inside an archive results in

• displaying the file contents with internal viewer of WinRAR,
• opening the file with an external viewer like UltraEdit (full file name of exe can be defined in same dialog),
• open the file with associated program according to registry,
• or ask the user which of the 3 other options should be used for the file.

I set external viewer and later tested also with associated program resulting in same behavior.

So what happened as I double clicked on a file within a ZIP archive opened in WinRAR.

• WinRAR extracted the file to an automatically created subdirectory with a random number in directory name in TEMP folder.
• Next WinRAR called uedit32.exe with the full name of the file as command line parameter.
• A second instance of UltraEdit started which detected that multiple instances is not allowed and an instance of UltraEdit is already present. Therefore the second instance passed the file name to already running instance and then the second instance exited itself. This resulted in no action of WinRAR.
• The file is now opened in UltraEdit and can be edited and saved.
• After switching back to WinRAR, WinRAR displays a message box informing the user that the file was modified and if the ZIP archive should be updated. Although I have just saved the file in UltraEdit, but not closed the file or exited UltraEdit, WinRAR updates the archive with the modified file on a positive confirmation of the question.
• I can close the file in UltraEdit now or continue editing and save it again. It does not matter what I do with the file in UltraEdit. WinRAR keeps the file extracted to the TEMP folder and scans the file properties for changes. Whenever the file is changed again, WinRAR asks if archive should be updated again with the modified file.
• WinRAR deletes the file on exit of WinRAR.

So instead of observing the called application on exit, WinRAR observes the extracted file for changes to determine if the user should be asked for updating the archive with a modified file. That's a very good method, isn't it.

Rhapdog can possible code an AutoHotkey script which

• saves current file in UE/UES (with Ctrl+S),
• closes the file in UE/UES (with Ctrl+F4),
• switches to WinRAR window,
• confirms the question with YES.

Total Commander (TC)

Total Commander is like 7-Zip, it observes exit of the called application to determine what to do with the extracted file. However, there is one important difference.

If the file is modified, saved and closed in already running instance of UE instead of the instance started shortly by TC, but UltraEdit continues running, TC asks the user if the file should be deleted now after called application has exited. The user has the choice to confirm the deletion of the file, or send the message box to background and later confirm it. In case the editing of the file is finished and therefore the deletion can be confirmed, TC does not simply delete it. TC first checks if the file was modified and if this is the case, asks the user if the modified file should be packed into the archive before deleting it.

The option to send the message box to background and later confirm the deletion of the file has the advantage, that the user can continue working with TC while the file is still opened in the editor, not in the called instance which terminated itself, but that does not matter. So the user can take a long time for finishing the editing, before the queued message box is brought to front, deletion is confirmed and modified file is packed to the archive.


The TC method has therefore 2 disadvantages in comparison to WinRAR method.

1. A button must be pressed on 2 dialogs instead of just one as in WinRAR.
2. If UE was not already running while TC called UE for editing the file, UE must be closed to trigger TC to check modification of the file, update the archive after confirmation and delete it.

The advantage of the TC method is that the file is not kept in TEMP folder until TC is closed which is often not done for a very long time (several days on my usage because of using hibernate mode). For WinRAR it is no problem to keep the file extracted in TEMP folder until WinRAR is closed because usually nobody has WinRAR open a very long time.


7-Zip

I have perhaps also a solution for 7-Zip. 7-Zip observes exit of called application and it is not possible to add command line parameters. So what about calling UE respectively UES indirectly by configuring a batch file as editor. The batch file contains following line:

@start "7-Zip File Edit" /wait "full path to uedit32.exe or uedit64.exe or uestudio.exe" /fni %1

@ just hides the command line in the opened console window on call of the batch file.

start is an internal command of cmd.exe to launch GUI applications.

"7-Zip File Edit" defines a title for the window. This parameter of command start is optional, but a title in double quotes must be given if anything else is enclosed in double quotes on the command line or start will interpret this double quoted string as title.

/wait is an important parameter of command start for this usage. It results in not continuing batch file processing until the started application has terminated and therefore 7-Zip does not trigger checking the extracted file for a modification.

The next parameter for command start is the full name of the executable to call. The double quotes are necessary if a space character is part of the path.

/fni is an UE/UES parameter to force a new instance ignoring configuration setting Allow multiple instances.

And %1 holds the value of first parameter which is the full name of the file to edit. %1 contains already the full name with double quote characters if 7-Zip called the batch file with the file name in double quotes as it should do.

That should work.


Also possible would be that the batch file removes the archive file attribute, calls UE or UES without fni and then periodically checks if archive attribute is set again on the file which happens on saving the file in UE/UES. Then the batch file terminates and 7-Zip continues.

It would be also possible that the batch file stores current modification date of the file in an environment variable, calls UE/UES normally and then periodically checks if last modification date of the files change to determine when to exit the batch.

Wait for 1 second within a batch file requires a small tool or other solutions. I have seen solutions like using ping.exe for a wait loop in batch jobs, but there are enough wait utilities in WWW which can be used to get a periodic check, let's say every second, within a batch file on archive attribute or last modification date change. One of these commands is Microsoft's Sleep tool, see Batch file SLEEP Command.


Update:

There is the setting Maintain separate process for each file opened from external application at Advanced - Configuration - Application Layout - Miscellaneous available since UltraEdit v18.10 and UEStudio v12.00 with Allow multiple instances not enabled. With this setting enabled it is possible to use only 1 instance of UltraEdit for any files opened by any application and nevertheless let applications like 7-Zip think a separate UltraEdit process is running as long as the file is opened in the single instance of UltraEdit.

Whow, most impressive analyzis and solution proposals, Mofi!

Thanks a lot, I will try to use one of your solutions.
The method that is used by WinRAR is the one I usally observe in many applications that open external editors (e.g. FileZilla). A pity that the makers of 7-zip did not go for this - actually rather simple - way.

Cheers and once again: Thanks!
Jörg.