[issue6818] remove/delete method for zipfile/tarfile objects

[Lars Gustäbel]

Lars Gustäbel <lars at gustaebel.de> added the comment:

-1, although I can only speak for tarfile. Removing members from a tar
archive sounds obvious and easy but it is *not*. A file in an archive is
stored as a header block (that contains the metadata) followed by a
number of data blocks (that contain the file's data). New files are
simply appended to the archive file. There is no central table of
contents whatsoever. To make things worse, a compressed archive is
compressed in one go from the beginning right up to the end, it is not
possible to access a member in the middle of an archive without having
to decompress all data before it.
Deleting files from an uncompressed archive is rather straightforward
implementation-wise but IO intensive and risky. In contrast, there is no
other way to delete files from a *compressed* tarfile than to make a
copy of it omitting the unwanted files.

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nosy: +lars.gustaebel

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