Zip is a simple, cross-platform file packaging and compression utility for Unix-like systems including Linux and Windows OS; plus many other operating systems. The “zip” format is a common archiving file format used on Windows PC’s and most importantly, it enables you to specify the compression level between 1 and 9 as an option.
Create Zip Archive File in Linux
To create a .zip (packaged and compressed) file from the command line, you can run a similar command as the one below, The -r flag enables recursive reading of files directory structure.
$ zip -r rootadminz_files.zip rootadminz_files
To unzip the rootadminz_files.zip archive file you have just created above, you can run the unzip command as follows.
$ unzip rootadminz_files.zip
The above command will extract the files into the current working directory. What if you want to send the unzipped files into a specific or different directory – you can learn this in the next section.
Extract Zip File to Specific or Different Directory
To extract/unzip .zip archive files to specific or different directory from the command line, include the -d unzip command flag as shown below. We will use the same example above to demonstrate this.
This will extract the .zip file content into the /tmp directory:
$ mkdir -p /tmp/unziped $ unzip rootadminz_files.zip -d /tmp/unziped $ ls -l /tmp/unziped/
For more usage information, read zip and unzip command man pages.
$ man zip $ man unzip
