How do I list the content of a file that is packed inside a jar file?

[Rogerio Kioshi]

Hi,

I'd like to know if there is a way to list the content of a file (an xml file, for instance) that is packed inside a jar file.

Is there an option in jar command line to do this?

[Kevin Workman]

Rogerio Kioshi wrote:Hi,

I'd like to know if there is a way to list the content of a file (an xml file, for instance) that is packed inside a jar file.

Is there an option in jar command line to do this?

This is the first result when I googled "jar view contents": http://java.sun.com/developer/Books/javaprogramming/JAR/basics/view.html

Is that what you mean?

[Rogerio Kioshi]

Kevin Workman wrote:

Rogerio Kioshi wrote:Hi,

I'd like to know if there is a way to list the content of a file (an xml file, for instance) that is packed inside a jar file.

Is there an option in jar command line to do this?

This is the first result when I googled "jar view contents": http://java.sun.com/developer/Books/javaprogramming/JAR/basics/view.html

Is that what you mean?

Not exactly. I'll explain: I have a file called persistence.xml inside the folder META-INF. This folder is packed in a jar file. What I wanted to do is that, from a command line, I could see what is written in the persistence.xml file. It would be like doing a "cat pesristence.xml", without having to unzip the jar file. I hope it is clearest to understand, now...

[David Newton]

No, but you could extract just that file. Or use any of the normal zip applications to open it in a file viewer.

[Rogerio Kioshi]

David Newton wrote:No, but you could extract just that file. Or use any of the normal zip applications to open it in a file viewer.

That's the way I'm doing, but I wanted to avoid opening the jar file all the time.

[David Newton]

No real way around that--it's in a jar file. *Something* will have to open it, but it's invisible in most OSes with appropriate explorer plugins.

[Ireneusz Kordal]

Jar is an ordinary ZIP archive, you can exctract/view files using ZIP tools.
Simple example - commands issued from the linux console:

krokodilko@krokodilko:~$ echo test > test.txt
krokodilko@krokodilko:~$ echo test1 >> test.txt
krokodilko@krokodilko:~$ cat test.txt
test
test1
krokodilko@krokodilko:~$ jar cf test.jar test.txt
krokodilko@krokodilko:~$ jar tf test.jar
META-INF/
META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
test.txt
krokodilko@krokodilko:~$ unzip -l test.jar
Archive:  test.jar
  Length      Date    Time    Name
---------  ---------- -----   ----
        0  2010-09-30 22:19   META-INF/
       71  2010-09-30 22:19   META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
       11  2010-09-30 22:18   test.txt
---------                     -------
       82                     3 files
krokodilko@krokodilko:~$ unzip -p test.jar test.txt | cat
test
test1

[David Newton]

That's kind of what we've been talking about.