Archiving and compressing with zip

ZIP is a popular compression format used on many platforms. It isn't as commonly used as gzip or bzip2 on Linux platforms, but files from the Internet are often saved in this format. In this recipe we will see how to use zip to perform compression and extraction.

How to do it...

Let's see how to use various options with zip:

  1. In order to archive with ZIP, the following syntax is used:
    $ zip archive_name.zip [SOURCE FILES/DIRS]

    For example:

    $ zip file.zip file

    Here, the file.zip file will be produced.

  2. Archive directories and files recursively as follows:
    $ zip -r archive.zip folder1 folder2

    In this command, -r is used for specifying recursive.

  3. In order to extract files and folders in a ZIP file, use:
    $ unzip file.zip ...

Get Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook - Second Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.

Start your free trial