Recursively unpack zip files in python

gistfile1.py

from zipfile import ZipFile

def unpack_zip(zipfile='', path_from_local=''):
    filepath = path_from_local+zipfile
    extract_path = filepath.strip('.zip')+'/'
    parent_archive = ZipFile(filepath)
    parent_archive.extractall(extract_path)
    namelist = parent_archive.namelist()
    parent_archive.close()
    for name in namelist:
        try:
            if name[-4:] == '.zip':
                unpack_zip(zipfile=name, path_from_local=extract_path)
        except:
            print 'failed on', name
            pass
    return extract_path
    
    # you can just call this with filename set to the relative path and file.
    path = unpack_zip(filename)

I had a zip file full of zip files, each of which might contain zip files, and I wanted a matching folder structure.

Wrote this for a mac.

i recommend you to not try this on 42.zip(your computer probably can't handle a few petabytes)