Zip folder and files in linux

Zip all files in directory?

Is there a way to zip all files in a given directory with the zip command? I’ve heard of using *.* , but I want it to work for extensionless files, too.

Have you tried navigating one-level up from your desired directory and doing zip myarch.zip mydir/* ?

*.* means any file with a dot. In cp/m and dos all files had a dot, and it made you type it (could not do * ). Therefore people came to see *.* as all files. Eventually Microsoft added long-filenames that could have zero, or more dots. To find a file that has a dot on windows you have to type *.*.* .

5 Answers 5

You can just use * ; there is no need for *.* . File extensions are not special on Unix. * matches zero or more characters—including a dot. So it matches foo.png , because that’s zero or more characters (seven, to be exact).

Note that * by default doesn’t match files beginning with a dot (neither does *.* ). This is often what you want. If not, in bash, if you shopt -s dotglob it will (but will still exclude . and .. ). Other shells have different ways (or none at all) of including dotfiles.

Alternatively, zip also has a -r (recursive) option to do entire directory trees at once (and not have to worry about the dotfile problem):

where mydir is the directory containing your files. Note that the produced zip will contain the directory structure as well as the files. As peterph points out in his comment, this is usually seen as a good thing: extracting the zip will neatly store all the extracted files in one subdirectory.

You can also tell zip to not store the paths with the -j / —junk-paths option.

The zip command comes with documentation telling you about all of its (many) options; type man zip to see that documentation. This isn’t unique to zip; you can get documentation for most commands this way.

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How Do I Zip All Files In A Directory In Linux?

Zip archives refer to container archives that contain one or more compressed files and directories. Zip files are cross-platform, allowing you to create zip archives in Windows, Linux, and macOS using various utilities. In addition, zip archive files take less space, making them easier to transfer and store.

In Linux, we use the zip archive utility to create zip archives. Throughout this tutorial, we will focus on how to go about creating zip archives in Linux using the zip utility.

Install Zip

Depending on your Linux distribution, you will need to install the zip utility. Since all Linux distributions support it, you can use the package manager to install it.

For Debian/Ubuntu

On Debian, use the command:

For REHL/CentOS

On CentOS and REHL family, use the command:

The Zip Command

The zip command is simple to use. The general syntax for the command is:

To create a zip archive of more than one file, pass them in a list (separated by space) after the zip filename. It is also good to ensure you have to write permissions in the directory you are creating the zip file.

How to Zip Files In Linux

We can zip files in a directory as:

The command above displays the name of the file added to the archive and the compression method.

Zip utility automatically adds a .zip extension to the archive filename—if not explicitly specified.

How to Compress Zip Directories In Linux

You can compress directories and the corresponding sub-directories by using the -r flag. The -r flag will tell zip to traverse the entire directory recursively.

For example, consider the /var/log directory. To create an archive of all the files and directories, we use the command:

To suppress the output from the compression process, use the -q for quiet mode. The command creates a zip archive of the specified files with no output.

How to Zip all Files in a Directory In Linux

What if you want to zip all files in a directory? In that case, we use wildcard expressions to do this.

The above command adds all the files and directories in the specified path and adds them to the zip archive.

How to Zip All Files, Including Hidden Files

To add even hidden files to a zip archive, use the wildcard (.* *). The command for that is:

Conclusion

As shown in this tutorial, Linux allows you to create zip archives. You can use any archive utility such as WinRar, 7zip, unzip; to unarchive the files.

About the author

John Otieno

My name is John and am a fellow geek like you. I am passionate about all things computers from Hardware, Operating systems to Programming. My dream is to share my knowledge with the world and help out fellow geeks. Follow my content by subscribing to LinuxHint mailing list

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How to Zip Files and Folders in Linux

This quick tip shows you how to create a zip folder in Ubuntu and other Linux distributions. Both terminal and GUI methods have been discussed.

Zip is one of the most popular archive file format out there. With zip, you can compress multiple files into one file. This not only saves disk space, it also saves network bandwidth. This is why you’ll encounter zip files almost all the time. As a normal user, mostly you’ll unzip files in Linux. But how do you zip a folder in Linux? This article helps you answer that question. Prerequisite: Verify if zip is installed Normally zip support is installed but no harm in verifying. Open a terminal and use the following command:

If you see some details on the zip version, you have zip installed already. If it displays ‘zip command not found’, you can run the below command to install zip and unzip support in Ubuntu and Debian based distributions.

sudo apt install zip unzip

Now that you know your system has zip support, you can read on to learn how to zip a directory in Linux.

Zip a folder in Linux Command Line

zip [option] output_file_name input1 input2

While there could be several options, I don’t want you to confuse with them. If your only aim is to create a zip folder from a bunch of files and directories, use the command like this:

zip -r output_file.zip file1 folder1

zip -r myzip abhi-1.txt abhi-2.txt sample_directory adding: abhi-1.txt (stored 0%) adding: abhi-2.txt (stored 0%) adding: sample_directory/ (stored 0%) adding: sample_directory/newfile.txt (stored 0%) adding: sample_directory/agatha.txt (deflated 41%)

You can use the -e option to create a password protect zip folder in Linux. You are not always restricted to the terminal for creating zip archive files. You can do that graphically as well. Here’s how!

Zip a folder in Linux Using GUI

Though I have used Ubuntu here, the method should be the same in other distributions using GNOME or other desktop environments.

If you want to compress a file or folder in desktop Linux, it’s just a matter of a few clicks. Go to the folder where you have the desired files (and folders) you want to compress into one zip folder. Here, select the files and folders. Now, right-click and select Compress. You can do the same for a single file as well. Now you can create a compressed archive file in zip , tar xz or 7z format. In case you are wondering, all three are various compression algorithms that you can use for compressing your files. Give it the name you desire and click on Create. It shouldn’t take long and you should see an archive file in the same directory. Well, that’s it. You successfully created a zip folder in Linux. The next step is to learn to unzip a zipped file in the Linux command line. I hope this quick little tip helped you with the zip files. Please feel free to share your suggestions.

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How to Zip and Unzip a directory and its files in Linux [duplicate]

I am a newbie in Linux.Whats is the complete process to zip and unzip a directory and its files.Please mention if any installation has to be done.

3 Answers 3

You say you are a newbie. Maybe you got Windows-experiences. If you do not have the packages installed yet, you need to

sudo apt-get install zip gzip tar 

first (or by a graphical pkg-manager).

Then, for an entry it would be the easiest way to use zip/unzip:

zip -r my_arch.zip my_folder 

Zip stores relative path names by default. There are several parameter-options available for zip. For that read: the manual (man zip). For a starting this will do.

Most often you will see .tar.gz endings in linux-world. That’s the product of two tools: TAR (the tape archiver) and GZIP (the GNU-Zip). Tar has got the call option to automatically gzip/gunzip files after «taring».

tar -cvzf may_arch.tar.gz my_folder 

• -c means «create»
• -v means «verbose» (sometimes bothersome and slowing down. )
• -z means «use (GNU)zip»
• -f XYZ declares the name of the output file. (You should chose a helping name like XYZ.tar.gz)

There may also be .tar.bz2 endings. This is the product of the -j parameter instead of the -z parameter: you will choose compression with BZIP2 (-> man bzip2).

To extract you simply use -x (eXtract) instead of -c (Create):

You can use the zip and unzip command line utilities. These can be installed by running

sudo apt-get install zip unzip 

I know several ways, but since you’re new on linux. So I’ll tell you how to zip a file using GUI method (the easiest way).

1. Create a new folder and fill it with anything you want, for example many of file (In my case, I’ll fill it with theme folder) :

1. Right click the folder you want to zip and select «Compress. » option :
2. You can choose which file format you want by clicking combobox next to «Filename» textbox. Also you can set the folder you want to zip location.

Clicking «Other options» will lead you to password section, in other word you can set password for your preferred file so someone (include you) have to enter password before unzip the file.

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