Patent ID: 7171422

Claim:
A method for caching nested archives, comprising the steps of: generating a first associative data structure; in the first associative data structure, associating data representing an unexpanded archive with a string representing the name of the archive; accessing the unexpanded archive using the name of the archive and the first associative data structure; expanding the archive; generating a second associative data structure; in the second associative data structure, associating one or more resources contained in the archive with one or more names of the one or more resources; in the first associative data structure, associating data representing the second associative data structure with the string representing the name of the archive; and wherein, for each expanded archive in said nested archive that is represented as a new associative data structure, a new entry is inserted in said first associative data structure using a name of the new archive as a key and a pointer or reference to the new archive as a value.