Command Line parms for self-extracting files?

[Robert McEuen]

Sorry if this double-posts...Google doesn't do a very good job of
communicating whether something has posted or not.

Using Access 97, WindowsXP

Is there a way to pass command line parameters (such as password and
extract path) when opening a WinZip self-extracting file on a machine
that does not have WinZip installed?

I've seen in other threads where the Shell command is used to call the
WinZip program and pass the .zip filenames, password, extract path,
etc. as a parameters. This assumes that a command line add-in has been
applied to the WinZip program on the machine. But the ones I'm dealing
with are .exe files that contain both the the .zip files and the
self-extract program. There is no WinZip program on the machine to
which an add-in can be applied.

Unfortunately, loading WinZip (or any other Zip utility) to each
machine is not an option.

Has anyone had to deal with this issue before? Thanks, as always, for
your replies.

[shumaker]

If the selfextracting files take command line parameters themselves,
then you can dynamically generate the command line. You should check
documentation in regards to self extracting files. They probably vary
depending on what program created the self extracting file.

Pseudo code:
FullPathFilenameOfZip = GetFullPath()
ParametersString = GetParameters()

CommandString = FullPathFilenameOfZip + " " + ParametersString

ExecuteCommand(ComandString)

[shumaker]

I'd like to add in the possibility of what if your program tries to
open an *.exe that is not a self extracting file?

The results would be unpredictable, because an exe can do just about
anything it wants to your computer.