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Is there any way to mount a zip (or tar, or any compressed file archive) as a volume on OSX?

If this is a stupid question for some reason (the structure of zip archives), that would be good to know too.

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Yep, if you install FUSE (Filesystem in User Space) and the fuse-zip extension. There is a GUI of sorts for FUSE called MacFuse that I'd recommend using.

You can use FUSE to mount all sorts of things including files over ssh or flickr (yes really!)

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Fascinating. Thanks for that and plus 11. Well, plus 1, can't do 11 just yet. – Yar Jan 25 '10 at 16:38
It's a pretty interesting bit of software - the sshfs is really handy for pretending that remote files are local. – Rich Bradshaw Jan 25 '10 at 17:14
and realizing that your hosting provider (GoDaddy in this case) breaks the connection every few minutes just for fun. Ugh. – Yar Mar 31 '10 at 23:40
Nice... That's ridiculous! – Rich Bradshaw Apr 1 '10 at 8:36
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Negative. You have to mount a filesystem (NTFS, ext3, etc.) and an archive isn't one.

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ISOs are file-systems that can be contained in files. Is that somehow totally different? – Yar Jan 25 '10 at 16:19
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Yes, because an ISO contains an actual filesystem, a zip is just a compressed archive. Note that Rich Bradshaw's answer contains info on how to use FUSE to mount things that aren't filesystems, as filesystems. – phoebus Jan 25 '10 at 16:38
@Yar :: Even you said yourself that ISOs are filesystems, and did I not put that you have to mount a filesystem? – Glen Y. Jan 25 '10 at 16:42
yes, you did put [sic] that you have to mount a filesystem. Did I not say "any way" in my question? – Yar Jan 25 '10 at 17:57
Wow. This answer is blantantly inaccurate. You should consider deleting it. – tylerl Jan 21 at 9:14
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