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Stop winzip from corrupting your files

Winzip will corrupt your files if you extract an archive that was created on a linux system using tar. By corrupt I mean that it will automatically add in an unwanted carriage return character at the end of each line. For some applications this does not cause a problem but for other applications it will result in your files being unusable until you strip out the offending carriage returns. I think that having default behaviour which gives you an unarchived file that is not identical to the one you archived is BAD!

To get around this problem either

  • Install cygwin and use tar to extract the tarball
  • Install 7zip (free!) and use this to extract the tarball
  • Configure winzip so it doesn't change your file

To configure winzip to leave your files unchanged do the following: Click on Options > Configuration > Miscellaneous and then uncheck 'TAR file smart CR/LF conversion'