Is there a way to edit files inside of a zip file without explicitly extracting them first?

I sometimes need to make changes to a .zip or .jar file, so I usually move the file to /tmp, extract all the files with unzip, edit a few files, and then re-zip up the files. This works, but it can be tedious. Is there a utility or shell script that I can use to edit a file inside of a zip file without explicitly calling unzip and zip (even if it's just a wrapper around these commands)?

Do you know the name of the file in the archive before unzipping it? You could make a function to unzip to /tmp, edit, and refresh the zip:

zipedit(){
    echo "Usage: zipedit archive.zip file.txt"
    unzip "$1" "$2" -d /tmp 
    vi /tmp/$2 && zip -j --update "$1"  "/tmp/$2" 
}

As it says, usage is:

zipedit myarchive.zip myfile.txt

This unpacks the named file from the archive, saves it to /tmp, edits it in vi then adds it back to the archive, while "junking" the path. Add to your .bash_profile, assuming bash...

EDIT: Below is a version which works with subfolders inside the archive... Note, do not use a slash before the name of the folder (i.e. use myfolder/file.txt not /myfolder/file.txt). If you edit a file that didn't already exist in the archive, it will create it for you. Also not sure if it will work with the absolute path to the zip file. Best stick with relative.

zipedit(){
    echo "Usage: zipedit archive.zip folder/file.txt"
    curdir=$(pwd)
    unzip "$1" "$2" -d /tmp 
    cd /tmp
    vi "$2" && zip --update "$curdir/$1"  "$2" 
    # remove this line to just keep overwriting files in /tmp
    rm -f "$2" # or remove -f if you want to confirm
    cd "$curdir"
}

Thanks for the question. I'll probably end up using this one too!

Another edit: Untested, but I read that vim and emacs will both edit jar files directly?

Vim supports transparently editing files inside zip files. Just execute:

vim file.zip

and you will be shown a list of files inside zip archive. Choose the one you want to edit, change what you want, and exit with :x

If vim responds with:

Cannot make changes, 'modifiable' is off

.. just run :set modifiable or :set ma (source: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5745506/vim-modifiable-is-off)

Short answer: NO.

If it's a wrapper, you are calling these commands. Anyway, the best I can think of is to open the file using file-roller, if you are in an X environment, that might work with a simple double click, depending on your setup. You can then double click on the compressed file to open it and then you can edit it:

$ file-roller b3.zip 

When you save your edited file, you should get this dialog:

You could make a script for this also, but that gets complicated if you have compressed archives that contain multiple files. Let me know if that's what you need and I might be able to cook something up.

Short pedantic answer; no. If you think about compression, you're using redundancy to shorten the files inside, so any edit changes the whole file within the archive, possibly the archive.

If you're being less theoretical, more practical, more "I don't want to have to manually unzip/zip" there are tools that you can use. ark on Linux is one I've used. You could also mount the archive with fuse-zip, though that's probably more work than a temp file.