zipcmt

Zipcmt is the super-fast batch, zip file comment viewer, and extractor.

Using a modern PC with the zip files stored on a solid-state drive, zipcmt handles many thousands of archives per second.
Comments convert to Unicode text for easy viewing, editing, or web hosting.
* comments can also be left as-is in their original CP437 or ISO-8859 text encoding.
Rarely see duplicate comments to avoid those annoying lists of identical site adverts.
Transfer the source zip file's last modification date over to any saved comments.
Tailored to both Windows and POSIX terminal platforms.

preview.mp4

Downloads

zipcmt is a standalone (portable) terminal application and doesn't require installation.

Windows, macOS, FreeBSD, Linux and Linux for ARM

Windows requires Windows 10 or newer, users of Windows 7 and 8 can use zipcmt v1.3.10.

Packages

APK (Alpine package)

wget https://github.com/bengarrett/zipcmt/releases/latest/download/zipcmt.apk
apk add zipcmt.apk

DEB (Debian package)

wget https://github.com/bengarrett/zipcmt/releases/latest/download/zipcmt.deb
dpkg -i zipcmt.deb

RPM (Red Hat package)

wget https://github.com/bengarrett/zipcmt/releases/latest/download/zipcmt.rpm
rpm -i zipcmt.rpm

ZST (Arch Linux package)

wget https://github.com/bengarrett/zipcmt/releases/latest/download/zipcmt.pkg.tar.zst
pacman -U zipcmt.pkg.tar.zst

macOS unverified developer

Unfortunately, newer macOS versions do not permit the running of unsigned terminal applications out of the box. But there is a workaround.

In System Settings, Privacy & Security, Security, toggle Allow applications downloaded from App store and identified developers.

Use Finder to extract the download for macOS, zipcmt_macOS.tar.tar.gz
Use Finder to select the extracted zipcmt binary.
^ control-click the binary and choose Open.
macOS will ask if you are sure you want to open it.
Confirm by choosing Open, which will open a terminal and run the program.
After this one-time confirmation, you can run this program within the terminal.

Windows Performance

It is highly encouraged that Windows users temporarily disable Virus & threat protection, Real-time protection, or create Windows Security Exclusions for the folders to be scanned before running zipcmt. Otherwise, the hit to performance is amazingly stark!

zipcmt -noprint 'C:\examples\'

This is the time taken with the default Microsoft Defender settings.

Scanned 11331 zip archives and found 412 unique comments, taking 1m38.9398945s

1 minute and 38 seconds to scan 11,000 zip archives.

This is the expected performance on an SSD with a Windows Security Exclusion in place.

Scanned 11331 zip archives and found 412 unique comments, taking 1.593534s

1.6 seconds to scan the same 11,000 zip archives!

Usage

Example usage

Scan and print the comments

zipcmt test/

#  ── test/test-with-comment.zip ───────────┐
#    This is an example test comment for zipcmt.
#
# Scanned 4 zip archives and found 1 unique comment

Only print the comments

zipcmt --quiet test/

#   This is an example test comment for zipcmt.

Scan and save the comments

Linux, macOS, etc.

zipcmt --noprint --save=~ test/

# Scanned 4 zip archives and found 1 unique comment

cat ~/test-with-comment-zipcomment.txt

#   This is an example test comment for zipcmt.

Windows PowerShell

zipcmt.exe --noprint --save='C:\Users\Ben\Documents' .\test\

# Scanned 4 zip archives and found 1 unique comment

cat 'C:\Users\Ben\Documents\test-with-comment-zipcomment.txt'

#   This is an example test comment for zipcmt.

Build

Go supports dozens of architectures and operating systems letting zipcmt to be built for most platforms.

# clone this repo
git clone git@github.com:bengarrett/zipcmt.git

# access the repo
cd zipcmt

# target and build the app for the host system
go build

# target and build for Windows 10, 32-bit
env GOOS=windows GOARCH=386 go build

# target and build for OpenBSD
env GOOS=openbsd GOARCH=amd64 go build

# target and build for Linux on MIPS CPUs
env GOOS=linux GOARCH=mips64 go build

Usages online

Reddit user Iron_Slug in r/bbs created a huge online collection of BBS ads, many of which were captured using zipcmt.

The website Defacto2 has a large collection of uncurated BBS ads also captured using zipcmt.

bengarrett / zipcmt