Date of a received ZIP file

[petermad]

2van Dusen

Thanks for the info

[pol098]

I had been looking for a replacement for "ARCLDS.COM -S", which dates an archive with the date of the newest file in it, for a long time, with no success; as soon as I posted a question on this forum ("Timestamping archive with latest file date") my search bore fruit and I was pointed to SetFolderDate (SFD), which is very useful - thanks to the author. This thread has gone quiet, I don't know if there is another, or if discussion has simply stopped. ARCLDS (the last available version, an MS-DOS program with long filename support) works quite well from TCMD in 32-bit Windows, but SFD is an advance. The one issue that has arisen is the rise of RAR v5, which neither ARCLDS nor SFD support (perhaps this is purely a 7zip issue in SFD, which will automatically resolve if and when 7zip - possibly an alpha release - supports the format?).

Thanks again, pol098

[pol098]

I need the facility to set the date of an archive to that of its newest member, only. SetFolderDate (SFD) does what I want, but won't handle 7z archives until the 7z program, invoked by SFD, is updated. For this single purpose, without the additional features of SFD, WinRAR will redate RAR archives, including SFX and RAR 5, but no other archive types (ZIP). So I can get what I want by using either SFD or ARCLDS (32-bit system only), in conjunction with WinRAR. (I prefer ARCLDS because it silently does my simple job with no additional window). I have suggested to RAR labs that they extend their redating facilities to non-RAR files, but don't know if they'll pick it up.

I believe that WinRAR, commercial software, will do this without registration (I have a licence).

WinRAR is run with command-line parameters, and doesn't open a window. Syntax is:
<path>WinRAR ch -tl <file pathname>

Within TCMD I have two buttons, invoking:
For archives excluding SFX and RAR5, 32-bit systems only:
c:\totalcmd\arclds.com -s
$P$N

and
For RAR (including RAR5 and SFX):
"C:\Program Files\WinRAR\WinRAR"
ch -tl %P%N

For non-RAR SFX files I can invoke SFD.

At the moment I use it on single files; the parameters might need modifying to handle a selected group (haven't even tested, don't need it yet).

This messy system is useful to me, because I very often have archives which don't indicate how old their contents are (I tend to set the time of redated archives to 00:00:00, which tells me that the archive date reflects the contents).

HTH

[pol098]

Following my previous post: I said that WinRAR had the facility to set the date of a RAR archive to that of its newest member, but not for ZIP files, which are very commonly downloaded and dated with the download date. I said that I had suggested to RAR labs that they extend their redating facilities to non-RAR files.

It seems that WinRAR is incorporating the facility to set the date of ZIP (as well as RAR) archives to that of the newest member. From the WinRAR 5.20 beta 1 release notes on http://www.rarlab.com/rarnew.htm : 'Command "ch" supports switches -tl, -cu, -cl also for ZIP archives. Previously "ch" allowed these switches only for RAR archive format'.

I haven't yet tried it (will probably wait for the official release), but it resolves most of the issues I had. Other archive formats than ZIP and RAR still need ARCLDS or manual reading, but they're relatively uncommon.

(SetFolderDate, discussed extensively in this thread, will only handle the newer RA5 archive format when 7-zip, which it invokes, is updated for this format.)

[pol098]

I often redate files so that the file modification date is useful, not just when I happened to download or edit a file. Typically: archives and other files dated to reflect their newest content; documents to show their original date, not trivial edits; scanned documents to show the document date, not scan date. I set the timestamp to show the date, but set the time to 0 to flag that the date is meaningful (the time is rarely important). In file lists such as a TCMD pane, files dated under NTFS reflect the timezone, so files timed at 0 show as 23:00 or 01:00 for local files according to summertime, and other values with 0 minutes and seconds for files from elsewhere; I look whether files have 0 minutes and seconds.

WinRAR can redate RAR and ZIP files to reflect the newest member, and I invoke it from a button in TCMD with appropriate parameters. It's tedious to do this manually. I have written a program to set the time of a file to 0 without changing the date, so a single button in TCMD can be made to both set the date of an archive to its newest member and set the time to 0.

If anyone would like the program to set the time, but not date, of a file to 0, I'd be happy to provide it, or details on single-click redating/timing within TCMD. I don't go further into detail as I don't know if this is of use to anyone - let me know.

HTH