Is there a counterpart of Mac OS-X filesystem bundles on Windows?

Question

What I need is a directory which the user can handle as a single file in the Windows explorer. Does something like this exist? If not, what comes closest?

Answer 1

The closest thing is probably Alternate Data Streams, although those are more akin to MacOS Named Forks than Bundles.

There are also some special cases, for example if you save a website with Internet Explorer you get an HTML file and a folder which are linked together.

Answer 2

Depends on your particular needs. As mentioned above, named streams are possible (on NTFS), however you should notice that not all applications copy files with named streams correctly. In some scenarios regular ZIP archives can work (Explorer shows them as folders). If you are doing software development, there exist libraries that let you store many files in one container file (eg. SolFS).