Work with ZIP files in Linux

This article demonstrates how to create and use zip files in Linux®.

Make sure that you have the necessary software:

• zip

• unzip

If you don´t have the zip library installed, you can search for it with the following command:

yum whatprovides zip

Install the zip library:

yum install -y zip

Zip

Zip files contain a collection of files in a compressed archive. Use zip files to keep a set of files together, save space, or reduce transmission time.

You can create a zip file from one or more files by using the following syntax:

zip file_name.zip source_file [source_file2 ....]

Or you can create a zip file from a directory by using the following syntax:

zip file_name.zip source_directory

Unzip

The unzip command uncompress a zip file.

To unzip a zip file in the current directory, run the following command:

unzip file_name.zip

To uncompress a zip file to a new directory, run the following commands:

mkdir /path/to/new/extract_directory
unzip file_name.zip -d /path/to/new/extract_directory

Resources

For more information, run the following commands to review the manual pages:

man zip
man unzip