Johan Jos

Glad the pattern approach worked for you. It is a neat way to make sure the two special characters are included, rather than leaving it to chance.

That timing test with an exclusion sounds like a good next step, since it would separate scanning time from compression time. Did that comparison show the gap mostly disappearing?

That extra prompt does add up when you extract a few archives in a row. I usually keep the files I am working on in a separate folder first, so I do not have to worry about overwriting anything while I sort them.