Unable to extract Python source code using Windows

[Scott David Daniels]

Elric02 at rogers.com wrote:
> I'm currently trying to get access to the Python source code, however
> whenever I try to extract the files using the latest version of WinZip
> (version 10) I get the following error "error reading header after
> processing 0 entries"
> I was under the impression that I could (from reading the various posts
> on this group) that I could simply extract the tar ball, using WinZip.


Perhaps you pulled the file as a non-binary (and so got LFs turned to
CRLFs).  You should be able to use a recent Python to read the archive
as well.  First, I'd do:

     import md5
     BLOCK_SIZE = 4096 * 8  # or whatever
     accumulator = md5.new()
     source = open('whatever.tar.gz', 'rb')
     try:
         while True:
             data = source.read(BLOCK_SIZE)
             if data:
                 accumulator.update(data)
             else:
                 break
     finally:
         source.close()
     print 'md5 checksum =', accumulator.hexdigest()

Compare that result to the published checksum for the archive
to make sure you don't have a garbled archive.

--Scott David Daniels
scott.daniels at acm.org