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Zip and unzip are two free command line programs that comes with Linux. For Windows, they can be downloaded from the Info-ZIP Website. This article provides the basic of archiving and compressing files using the command line zip program.

Zip one file

zip filename.zip file_to_compress

Zip multiple files

zip filename.zip file_to_compress1 file_to_compress2 file_to_compress3

Compression options

The compression level ranges from 0 to 9. Level 0 means no compression, 1 compress faster, and 9 compress better. The default is 6.

zip -9 filename.zip file_to_compress

Password protect zip archive

zip -P the_password filename.zip file_to_compress

To be prompted for password instead of specifying the password in the command line, use -e instead of -P.

zip -e filename.zip file_to_compress
Enter password:
Verify password:

Unzip files

unzip filename.zip

Unzip files with informations (verbose mode)

unzip -v filename.zip

List files that will be unzipped

unzip -l filename.zip

Test Files That Will Be Unzipped

unzip -t filename.zip