Zip

Zip archives and compresses files using a format compatible with PKZIP and WinZip. Unlike Linux or UNIX compression and archiving utilities, zip combines archiving and compression.

For options, see the man page. zip keeps original files intact ( except for very particular options ). To decompress files use unzip.

Usecases

• You want to pack a folder source including all files. The archive shall be named target.zip

zip -r target source

Examples

• zip -r myarchive myfolder

  Creates myarchive.zip, an archive containing every files and directories present in myfolder, even files with a starting dot.

• zip documents *

  Creates the documents.zip archive containing all the files in the current directory. Files beginning with a dot might be excluded depending on your shell filename expansion feature configuration. Directories will be empty in documents.zip.

• zip documents *.sdw

  Creates the documents.zip archive containing all the .sdw files present in the current directory.

• zip -r archive * -x \*.doc

  Archives all files and directories in the working directory excluding names with the .doc suffix. Please note the backslashed "*" character to prevent the shell from interpreting it. It will be interpreted and applied by the zip command instead, in all processed directories.

• zip -g documents essays/*

  Appends all the files of the essays directory to the existing documents.zip archive.

• zip -mT documents *

  Moves all files of the current directory to the documents.zip archive. This is dangerous as this actually deletes those files. Please read the man page for more details.

TroubleShooting

• You get the error message

zip warning: name not matched

This can mean your file is bigger than 2 GigaByte and cannot be packed therefore.

• You get the error message

zip I/O error: Invalid argument

This can mean your file is bigger than 2 GigaByte and cannot be packed therefore.

See also

• zipinfo
• zipnote
• zipsplit
• tar
• unpack