> It effectively reduces the I/O, while unlike TAR, allowing direct random to the files without "extracting" them or seeking through the entire file
How do you access a particular file without seeking through the entire file? You can't know where anything is without first seeking through the whole file.
At the end of the ZIP file, there's a central directory of all files contained in that archive. Read the last block, seek to the block containing the file you want to access, done
How do you access a particular file without seeking through the entire file? You can't know where anything is without first seeking through the whole file.