The Zip Editor is an Eclipse plugin that allows to view and modify archives.
These archive types are supported:
- Zip
- Tar
- Tar-Gzip
- Tar-Bzip2
- RPM (readonly)
The main functionality of the plugin is the Zip Editor itself. It is by default associated with these archive extensions mapped via the respective archive content type:
- Zip (*.aar, *.apk, *.ear, *.jar, *.jmod, *.war, *.zip)
- Tar (*.tar)
- Tar gz (*.tar.gz, *.tgz)
- Tar Bzip2 (*.tar.bz2, *.tbz)
- Gzip (*.gz)
- Bzip2 (.bz2)
- Rpm (*.rpm)
With the Zip Editor you can open each supported archive file regardless if the file is located within the Eclipse workspace or not. It can also open files from other sources like a remote repository. Such files normally are opened readonly.
The editor has two supported modes: table (default) and tree. You can toggle between them using the toolbar item 
In table mode you can choose the visible columns using the toolbar menu 
If the editor has been opened on a file, you can view the content of an archive entry by double clicking it. This uses the default editor associated with the content type of the file inside the archive entry. You can also choose which editor to open by using the Open With local menu entry.
When an editor is opened this way, the file from the archive is always extracted into a temporary folder. This folder will automatically be deleted if the Zip Editor gets closed.
There is also an entry Other... within the Open With sub menu which lets you call an external program to handle the extracted archive content. For instance if you want to display the content as hex dump using xxd, click Open With/Other/External and then Add (or Edit from the local menu for an existing external program). Type xxd $p | $i within the command text field. This means the external program xxd is called with the path of the extracted archive entry and the output of xxd is directed to the internal text editor.
You could choose to show it in another editor. Then place the cursor after the pipe symbol (|) within the command text field, delete the $i, press <Ctrl + Space>, choose $e, type and then press <Ctrl + Space> again. Now choose your favorite editor and press OK. Sometimes an editor likes its files to have a specific file extension. Then add $x to the expression.
e.g. xxd $x.hex $p | $e org.eclipse.jdt.ui.CompilationUnitEditor
would open the file with the extension .hex
Files that have been opened as described above can be modified. The Zip Editor (if it receives the focus) checks if a file that has been extracted within the temporary folder has been modified. This is done by comparing file modification times. If it detects a modification, it shows the dialog File has been modified which lets you choose to update the archive or not.
Note that you can update several files before saving the archive back to the source. This follows the normal editor life cycle. A modified archive entry is then indicated by a > in front of its name. A newly added entry btw. is indicated by a *.
The Properties menu entry of the local sub menu lets you view and modify properties of an entry. In contrast to most other property dialogs within the Eclipse platform you can modify multiple archive entries at once. Simply select several entries, select the Properties menu entry, modify a value e.g. the date and press OK. All selected entries will be modified. The readonly Size value contains the sum of the selected entry sizes.
If one or more folder entries are selected, the Size reflects the sum of all entries within that folders.
Zip Editor plugin extends the Project Explorer so that archive content can be browsed. The same way a file can be extracted to a temporary folder and opened within an editor can be used here. Differently to the Zip Editor, (at the moment) you cannot save back modified files.
There are several ways to use the archive search feature:
If a Zip Editor is opened, press <Ctrl + H>, choose "Selected resources", type your search text and/or the entry patterns and press "Search". The current file will be scanned for the text.
Either select the resources you want to search in from within a view like the Project Explorer or open the search dialog e.g. using <Ctrl + H>. Then choose the Zip Search tab and select Workspace as the search source. This searches the entire workspace.
Expand a library node within the Project Explorer or Package Explorer view, select the libraries you want to search in, press <Ctrl + H> to open the search dialog, choose the Zip Search tab and select Selected resources.
Open the search dialog, choose the Zip Search tab and select File system. You can now either choose a path or files using the file system tree selector below or you type in a path with the text field above the tree selector.
Archive search results are displayed within the platform Search view. You can switch between Show as List and Show as Tree as known from text searches. A double click on a search result which reflects an archive entry that is not itself an archive always opens the internal Text Editor with on the archive entry. Search result annotations are displayed.
The local sub menu allows to (besides the known functions)
- directly open the top level archive file using Open archive
- open the selected entry with the associated editor or a previously used editor