On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 5:41 PM, Glenn Linderman <v+pyt...@g.nevcal.com> wrote: > On approximately 2/2/2010 4:28 PM, came the following characters from the > keyboard of Guido van Rossum: >> >> Argh. zipfiles are way to complex to be writing. > > Agreed. But in reading that, it somehow triggered a question: does > zipimport only work for zipfiles, or does it work for any archive format > that Python stdlib knows how to decode? And if only the former, why are > they so special?
The former. They are special because (unlike e.g. tar files) you can read the table of contents of a zipfile without parsing the entire file. Also because they are universally supported which makes it unnecessary to support other formats. Again, contrast tar files which are virtually unheard of on Windows. -- --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido) _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
