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+
+Zip 3 and UnZip 6 now support many of the extended limits of Zip64.
+
+A) Hard limits of the Zip archive format:
+
+ Number of entries in Zip archive: 64 k (2^16 - 1 entries)
+ Compressed size of archive entry: 4 GByte (2^32 - 1 Bytes)
+ Uncompressed size of entry: 4 GByte (2^32 - 1 Bytes)
+ Size of single-volume Zip archive: 4 GByte (2^32 - 1 Bytes)
+ Per-volume size of multi-volume archives: 4 GByte (2^32 - 1 Bytes)
+ Number of parts for multi-volume archives: 64 k (1^16 - 1 parts)
+ Total size of multi-volume archive: 256 TByte (4G * 64k)
+
+ The number of archive entries and of multivolume parts are limited by
+ the structure of the "end-of-central-directory" record, where the these
+ numbers are stored in 2-Byte fields.
+ Some Zip and/or UnZip implementations (for example Info-ZIP's) allow
+ handling of archives with more than 64k entries. (The information
+ from "number of entries" field in the "end-of-central-directory" record
+ is not really neccessary to retrieve the contents of a Zip archive;
+ it should rather be used for consistency checks.)
+
+ Length of an archive entry name: 64 kByte (2^16 - 1)
+ Length of archive member comment: 64 kByte (2^16 - 1)
+ Total length of "extra field": 64 kByte (2^16 - 1)
+ Length of a single e.f. block: 64 kByte (2^16 - 1)
+ Length of archive comment: 64 KByte (2^16 - 1)
+
+ Additional limitation claimed by PKWARE:
+ Size of local-header structure (fixed fields of 30 Bytes + filename
+ local extra field): < 64 kByte
+ Size of central-directory structure (46 Bytes + filename +
+ central extra field + member comment): < 64 kByte
+
+ Note:
+ In 2001, PKWARE has published version 4.5 of the Zip format specification
+ (together with the release of PKZIP for Windows 4.5). This specification
+ defines new extra field blocks that allow to break the size limits of the
+ standard zipfile structures. In this extended Zip format, the size limits
+ of zip entries (and the complete zip archive) have been extended to
+ (2^64 - 1) Bytes and the maximum number of archive entries to (2^32-1).
+ Zip 3.0 supports these Zip64 extensions and should be released shortly.
+ UnZip 6.0 should support these standards.
+
+B) Implementation limits of UnZip:
+
+ Note:
+ This section should be updated when UnZip 6.0 is near release.
+
+ 1. Size limits caused by file I/O and decompression handling:
+ Size of Zip archive: 2 GByte (2^31 - 1 Bytes)
+ Compressed size of archive entry: 2 GByte (2^31 - 1 Bytes)
+
+ Note: On some systems, UnZip may support archive sizes up to 4 GByte.
+ To get this support, the target environment has to meet the following
+ requirements:
+ a) The compiler's intrinsic "long" data types must be able to hold
+ integer numbers of 2^32. In other words - the standard intrinsic
+ integer types "long" and "unsigned long" have to be wider than
+ 32 bit.
+ b) The system has to supply a C runtime library that is compatible
+ with the more-than-32-bit-wide "long int" type of condition a)
+ c) The standard file positioning functions fseek(), ftell() (and/or
+ the Unix style lseek() and tell() functions) have to be capable
+ to move to absolute file offsets of up to 4 GByte from the file
+ start.
+ On 32-bit CPU hardware, you generally cannot expect that a C compiler
+ provides a "long int" type that is wider than 32-bit. So, many of the
+ most popular systems (i386, PowerPC, 680x0, et. al) are out of luck.
+ You may find environment that provide all requirements on systems
+ with 64-bit CPU hardware. Examples might be Cray number crunchers
+ or Compaq (former DEC) Alpha AXP machines.
+
+ The number of Zip archive entries is unlimited. The "number-of-entries"
+ field of the "end-of-central-dir" record is checked against the "number
+ of entries found in the central directory" modulus 64k (2^16).
+
+ Multi-volume archive extraction is not supported.
+
+ Memory requirements are mostly independent of the archive size
+ and archive contents.
+ In general, UnZip needs a fixed amount of internal buffer space
+ plus the size to hold the complete information of the currently
+ processed entry's local header. Here, a large extra field
+ (could be up to 64 kByte) may exceed the available memory
+ for MSDOS 16-bit executables (when they were compiled in small
+ or medium memory model, with a fixed 64kByte limit on data space).
+
+ The other exception where memory requirements scale with "larger"
+ archives is the "restore directory attributes" feature. Here, the
+ directory attributes info for each restored directory has to be held
+ in memory until the whole archive has been processed. So, the amount
+ of memory needed to keep this info scales with the number of restored
+ directories and may cause memory problems when a lot of directories
+ are restored in a single run.
+
+C) Implementation limits of the Zip executables:
+
+ Note:
+ This section has been updated to reflect Zip 3.0.
+
+ 1. Size limits caused by file I/O and compression handling:
+ Without Zip64 extensions:
+ Size of Zip archive: 2 GByte (2^31 - 1 Bytes)
+ Compressed size of archive entry: 2 GByte (2^31 - 1 Bytes)
+ Uncompressed size of entry: 2 GByte (2^31 - 1 Bytes),
+ (could/should be 4 GBytes...)
+ Using Zip64 extensions:
+ Size of Zip archive: 2^63 - 1 Bytes
+ Compressed size of archive entry: 2^63 - 1 Bytes
+ Uncompressed size of entry: 2^63 - 1 Bytes
+
+ Multi-volume archive creation now supported in the form of split
+ archvies. Currently up to 99,999 splits are supported.
+
+ 2. Limits caused by handling of archive contents lists
+
+ 2.1. Number of archive entries (freshen, update, delete)
+ a) 16-bit executable: 64k (2^16 -1) or 32k (2^15 - 1),
+ (unsigned vs. signed type of size_t)
+ a1) 16-bit executable: <16k ((2^16)/4)
+ (The smaller limit a1) results from the array size limit of
+ the "qsort()" function.)
+
+ 32-bit executables: <1G ((2^32)/4)
+ (usual system limit of the "qsort()" function on 32-bit systems)
+
+ b) stack space needed by qsort to sort list of archive entries
+
+ NOTE: In the current executables, overflows of limits a) and b) are NOT
+ checked!
+
+ c) amount of free memory to hold "central directory information" of
+ all archive entries; one entry needs:
+ 96 bytes (32-bit) resp. 80 bytes (16-bit)
+ + 3 * length of entry name
+ + length of zip entry comment (when present)
+ + length of extra field(s) (when present, e.g.: UT needs 9 bytes)
+ + some bytes for book-keeping of memory allocation
+
+ Conclusion:
+ For systems with limited memory space (MSDOS, small AMIGAs, other
+ environments without virtual memory), the number of archive entries
+ is most often limited by condition c).
+ For example, with approx. 100 kBytes of free memory after loading and
+ initializing the program, a 16-bit DOS Zip cannot process more than 600
+ to 1000 (+) archive entries. (For the 16-bit Windows DLL or the 16-bit
+ OS/2 port, limit c) is less important because Windows or OS/2 executables
+ are not restricted to the 1024k area of real mode memory. These 16-bit
+ ports are limited by conditions a1) and b), say: at maximum approx.
+ 16000 entries!)
+
+
+ 2.2. Number of "new" entries (add operation)
+ In addition to the restrictions above (2.1.), the following limits
+ caused by the handling of the "new files" list apply:
+
+ a) 16-bit executable: <16k ((2^64)/4)
+
+ b) stack size required for "qsort" operation on "new entries" list.
+
+ NOTE: In the current executables, the overflow checks for these limits
+ are missing!
+
+ c) amount of free memory to hold the directory info list for new entries;
+ one entry needs:
+ 24 bytes (32-bit) resp. 22 bytes (16-bit)
+ + 3 * length of filename
+
+ NOTE: For larger systems, the actual limits may be more performance
+ issues (how long you want to wait) rather than available memory and other
+ resources.
+
+D) Some technical remarks:
+
+ 1. For executables compiled without LARGE_FILE_SUPPORT and ZIP64_SUPPORT
+ enabled, the 2GByte size limit on archive files is a consequence of
+ the portable C implementation of the Info-ZIP programs. Zip archive
+ processing requires random access to the archive file for jumping
+ between different parts of the archive's structure. In standard C,
+ this is done via stdio functions fseek()/ftell() resp. unix-io functions
+ lseek()/tell(). In many (most?) C implementations, these functions use
+ "signed long" variables to hold offset pointers into sequential files.
+ In most cases, this is a signed 32-bit number, which is limited to
+ ca. 2E+09. There may be specific C runtime library implementations
+ that interpret the offset numbers as unsigned, but for us, this is not
+ reliable in the context of portable programming.
+
+ If LARGE_FILE_SUPPORT and ZIP64_SUPPORT are defined and supported by
+ the system, 64-bit off_t file offsets are supported and the above
+ larger limits are supported. As off_t is signed, the maximum offset
+ is usually limited to 2^63 - 1.
+
+ 2. The 2GByte limit on the size of a single compressed archive member
+ is again a consequence of the implementation in C.
+ The variables used internally to count the size of the compressed
+ data stream are of type "long", which is guaranted to be at least
+ 32-bit wide on all supported environments.
+
+ But, why do we use "signed" long and not "unsigned long"?
+
+ Throughout the I/O handling of the compressed data stream, the
+ sign bit of the "long" numbers is (mis-)used as a kind of overflow
+ detection. In the end, this is caused by the fact that standard C
+ lacks any overflow checking on integer arithmetics and does not
+ support access to the underlying hardware's overflow detection
+ (the status bits, especially "carry" and "overflow" of the CPU's
+ flags-register) in a system-independent manner.
+
+ So, we "misuse" the most-significant bit of the compressed data
+ size counters as carry bit for efficient overflow/underflow detection.
+ We could change the code to a different method of overflow detection,
+ by using a bunch of "sanity" comparisons (kind of "is the calculated
+ result plausible when compared with the operands"). But, this would
+ "blow up" the code of the "inner loop", with remarkable loss of
+ processing speed. Or, we could reduce the amount of consistency checks
+ of the compressed data (e.g. detection of premature end of stream) to
+ an absolute minimum, at the cost of the programs' stability when
+ processing corrupted data.
+
+ Summary: Changing the compression/decompression core routines to
+ be "unsigned safe" would require excessive recoding, with little
+ gain on maximum processable uncompressed size (a gain can only be
+ expected for hardly compressable data), but at severe costs on
+ performance, stability and maintainability. Therefore, it is
+ quite unlikely that this will ever happen for Zip/UnZip.
+
+ With LARGE_FILE_SUPPORT and ZIP64_SUPPORT enabled and supported,
+ the above arguments still apply, but the limits are based on 64 bits
+ instead of 32 and should allow most large files and archives to be
+ processed.
+
+ Anyway, the Zip archive format is more and more showing its age...
+ The effort to lift the 2GByte limits should be better invested in
+ creating a successor for the Zip archive format and tools. But given
+ the latest improvements to the format and the wide acceptance of zip
+ files, the format will probably be around for awhile more.
+
+Please report any problems using the web contact form at: www.Info-ZIP.org
+
+Last updated: 26 January 2002, Christian Spieler
+ 25 May 2008, Ed Gordon