[vox-tech] archiving library in C

[Peter Jay Salzman]

hi all,

suppose i have a video file, a sound file, an image file, a gnumeric
spreadsheet, a number, a boolean and an mp3.

and suppose all those things are needed by a C program.  kind of like
how a game uses a plethora of image and sound files.

is there a library that will allow me to combine all that different
stuff into a single file and then let me transparently access any
individual element using an API in C?

i suppose i can do it with a bunch of system() calls with tar, but that
isn't a very nice solution.

i've delved into the code for lxdoom, prboom and doom legacy.  wad files
are very similar.  they have a directory structure and there's an
interface for accessing any particular element of the wad file.  the
boundary between "things" is enforced by the wad format itself, but it's
up to the program itself (doom) to interpret the returned data correctly
(whether it's sound info, image info, a linedef, etc....).

anything similar as a canned C library?   tar/ar would be perfect if
there was a C API to go along with them.

pete