> I would still like to see the zipfile module to be able to detect > ill-formed zipfiles - certainly not by default. Agreed. We already do produce some informational messages via the documented 'ZipFile.debug' attribute. Just checking that flag and producing a message to stdout like we do in other cases is one option. Another, as you suggested already, is to provide a strict flag that indicates an exception should be thrown upon encountering an ill-formed file. I like the idea of reusing what we already have. Although, when it fails, it doesn't fail loudly.