Zipping files in linux

Suppose we have following files in my current directory are listed below:
hello1.c
hello2.c
hello3.c
hello4.c

Please write comments if you find anything incorrect, or you want to share more information about the topic discussed above.

Источник

Zipping and Unzipping Files under Linux

Asked by Yamir via e-mail

Question: MS-Windows has winzip program. I cannot find anything under Application menu to zip or unzip files on Linux. I am using Debian Linux. How do I zip and unzip file under Linux operating systems?

Answer: Linux has both zip and unzip program. By default, these utilities are not installed. You can install zip/unzip tools from the shell prompt. Open the Terminal by clicking on Application > System Tools > Terminal. You must be a root user, Type the following two commands to install zip and unzip program on Debian or Ubuntu Linux:

OR
$ sudo apt-get install zip unzip
If you are Red Hat Linux/Fedora/CentOS Linux user then you can use the yum command to install zip and unzip program as follows:

• zip is a compression and file packaging utility for Linux and Unix (including FreeBSD, Solaris etc).
• unzip will list, test, or extract files from a ZIP archive files.

ziping files/directories examples

Creates the archive data.zip and puts all the files in the current directory in it in compressed form, type:

Note: No need to add .zip extension or suffix as it is added automatically by zip command.
Use the ls command to verify new zip file:
$ ls
To zip up an entire directory (including all subdirectories), type the following command:

unziping files/directories examples

To use unzip to extract all files of the archive pics.zip into the current directory & subdirectories:

You can also test pics.zip, printing only a summary message indicating whether the archive is OK or not:

To extract the file called cv.doc from pics.zip:

To extract all files into the /tmp directory:

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To list all files from pics.zip:

Linux GUI packages

You can use the following graphics packages

(1) KDE Desktop: Ark is an Archive Manager for the KDE Desktop. You can start Ark from Application > Accessories.

(2)GNOME Desktop: File Roller ia an Archive Manager for the GNOME Desktop.

See also

For more information please consult the following resources:

• Compressing files under Linux or UNIX cheat sheet
• Read man pages of zip and unzip (type man zip or man unzip at shell prompt)
• ark handbook
• File Roller home page

Источник

Linux zip folder | 16 practical Linux zip command examples

Table of Contents

Linux Zip Command Examples

In this tutorial I will share various Unix and Linux zip command examples and scenarios to understand how to zip a folder and how to create a zip file.

zip is a compression and file packaging utility for Unix, VMS, MSDOS, OS/2, Windows 9x/NT/XP, Minix, Atari, Macintosh, Amiga, and Acorn RISC OS.

Pre-requisite:

Before we zip a folder and create a zip file in Linux or Unix, we must install the zip and unzip utility.

Install zip

In some Linux and Unix variants, zip is installed by default with operating system. You can also manually install zip utility by using yum

Install unzip

Similarly to be able to unzip files and folders in Linux or Unix you will need unzip utility

1. How to zip a folder with multiple files Linux

In this Linux zip command example you will learn, how to zip a folder with multiple files or all files from the current working directory and store the archive at the same location. List the files which you wish to zip using ls command

Let’s take this Linux zip command example. Here we will zip multiple files or rather all the files from current working directory.

Verify the newly created zip file ( rpms.zip )

Now in the last zip command example we archived all the files present inside /tmp/files directory. Now I wish to zip all files except one or some selected files. In this case you must provided the name of the files which you wish to archive so zip will only consider those files for compression and archive.

So now our archive only contains two files which we provided as input and the archive was stored in the same path.

2. How to create a zip file by excluding some files

Use -x or —exclude to zip all files except some files to exclude files from being compressed and archived in Linux or Unix

Below Linux zip command example will show how to create a zip file with all files except some files.

To create zip a folder with all files except some files using a regex, here all file names starting with bc will be excluded

To create a zip folder by excluding multiple files

Similarly you can also zip all folders and exclude some directories using -r to zip directories

3. How to zip a folder by compressing directory and sub-directories

By default zip command will only compress files. if you attempt to compress directory, then you may get below output

As you see the stored content was 0%. So how to zip a folder or directory?

Use -r or —recurse-paths to zip a folder in Linux or Unix and compress directory structure recursively using Linux zip command example:

4. How to display zip archive content

We can use -dc or —display-counts to display running zip file count of entries. Check below Linux zip command example to list zip archive content without extracting.

5. How to zip a folder with password protection

You can zip a folder and also password protect the zip file using -e or —encrypt . With this argument you create a zip file with an encrypted password. Let us use this Linux zip command example to understand this better:

Now how to unzip files? If you try to unzip to directory, the zip file will prompt for password. Without password you will not be able to unzip to directory.

6. How to update or modify existing file in zip archive

You can use -f or —freshen to update or modify zip file content. With -f you replace (freshen) an existing entry in the zip archive only if it has been modified more recently than the version already in the zip file, unlike the update option (-u) this will not add files that are not already in the zip archive.

You can modify zip file content here.

Now add some more content to the existing file

7. How to add files to existing zip archive

How to add files to the existing zip archive, instead of creating a new zip archive. If this operation fails, zip attempts to restore the archive to its original state . If the restoration fails, the archive might become corrupted. This option is ignored when there’s no existing archive or when at least one zip archive member must be updated or deleted.

In my earlier Linux zip command example I had created a zip archive /tmp/test_archive.zip . Here we will will add new files to the same zip archive

8. How to list zip archive contents without extracting

You can also list zip archive contents without unzip to directory using -sf . For instance you have a requirement to check if a file exists in the archive so without unzip to directory you can list the zip file contents on the output and use additional regex and tools to grep the file you are looking for.

9. How to create a zip file without complete path (Store only the file name)

By default when we create a zip archive, it stores the relative path for the archived content. Lets take this Linux zip command example which stores the relative path of files:

Here list the content of test_archive , as you see the relative path is stored along with the filename

So to create a zip file in Linux without complete path and only store the filename in zip archive, we use -j or —junk-paths . This will create a zip archive without relative path of the files and store just the name of file (junk the path), and do not store directory names. For Example:

List and verify the zip archive content.

10. How to create a zip file and delete original files after archiving

• By default when you create a zip file, it leaves the original files and folders after creating archive,
• But you can also make zip delete original files after archiving is complete.
• Instead of copy, Move the specified files into the zip archive
• Actually, this deletes the original target directories/files after making the specified zip archive.
• If a directory becomes empty after removal of the files, the directory is also removed.
• No deletions are done until zip has created the archive without error .

This is useful for conserving disk space, but is potentially dangerous so it is recommended to use it in combination with -T to test the archive before you make zip delete original files after archiving. In this we create a zip archive, and then delete the original files are we zip the folder.

After you zip a folder, verify the content stored under /tmp/files . So as expected the original files are deleted from the source location after archiving.

Similarly to store the entire content of /tmp/files including the source directory use -r directive

As expected our source directory is also deleted after archiving

11. How to zip a folder with higher compression level

When we zip a folder, the default zip compression level is -6 . zip command supports compression level from 3 where 0 means no compression and -9 means highest (maximum) compression. We will perform basic compression and monitor the time difference

With the default compression level, when we create a zip folder, the compressing of 1668 rpms the zip tool took