What do I need in order to extract and combine text files from multiple ZIP files, via command line?

Posted by Iszi on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Iszi
Published on 2012-02-24T19:59:32Z Indexed on 2012/04/05 5:33 UTC
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I've got an interesting scripting challenge in front of me. I'm fairly certain there's a way to do it, but I feel like I'm probably lacking some particular tools and/or functional knowledge.

There's some fifty-plus ZIP files that each contain, among other things, text files that need to be merged with one another. The structure is something like this:

C:\Reports\FirstJob-1.zip  
|-MyName  
  |-FirstJob
    |-1
      |-[Some other folders]
      |-TXTReports
        |-English
          |-[Some other files]
          |-Report.txt  

C:\Reports\FirstJob-2.zip  
|-MyName  
  |-FirstJob
    |-1
      |-[Some other folders]
      |-TXTReports
        |-English
          |-[Some other files]
          |-Report.txt 

C:\Reports\SecondJob-1.zip  
|-MyName  
  |-SecondJob
    |-1
      |-[Some other folders]
      |-TXTReports
        |-English
          |-[Some other files]
          |-Report.txt

If I had all the Report.txt files in one regular folder, and uniquely named, I could probably just write a FOR statement that targets *.txt and runs something like type filename.txt >> Consolidated.txt on each. However, these all have the same file name and are embedded deep within separate ZIP files.

The potentially useful tools I currently have at my disposal are Windows XP Professional SP3, PowerShell, and WinZip. I'd rather not download or install anything else, but I do understand that third-party tools (or additional tools from Microsoft or WinZip) may be necessary. Whatever tools I use should run natively in Windows. I really don't want to have to mess with Cygwin or other emulators on this system.

At the very least, I need a tool that will allow me to analyze and manipulate ZIP files from the command line. Also, are there any other particular complications to this that I've not yet thought of?

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