Archiving With The zip And unzip Commands

The zip program is a useful tool for archiving or transferring a set of files. A simple command like "zip archive dir" can quickly package a whole directory into a single compressed archive file (often called "zip file"). Depending on the type of files being packaged, the size of the archive often gets compressed to a fraction of the size of the original files.

Such archive files are therefore well suited for backups or emailing. The file format used by zip is standard across most operating systems and is therefore also a good way to transfer data between diverse computer systems.

The reverse operation, extracting the files and directories from an archive file, is accomplished with the unzip command. For example, the command "unzip docs" extracts all files and directories of the archive file "docs.zip" into the current directory.

Detailed information on the options of the zip and unzip commands can be found on their man pages (zip, unzip).