zip
package and compress (archive) files
see also :
tar - unzip - gzip
Synopsis
zip
[-aABcdDeEfFghjklLmoqrRSTuvVwXyz!@$]
[--longoption ...] [-b path]
[-n suffixes] [-t date]
[-tt date] [zipfile [file ...]]
[-xi list]
zipcloak
(see separate man page)
zipnote
(see separate man page)
zipsplit
(see separate man page)
Note: Command
line processing in zip has been changed to support
long options and handle all options and arguments more
consistently. Some old command lines that depend on command
line inconsistencies may no longer work.
add an example, a script, a trick and tips
examples
The simplest example:
zip stuff *
creates the archive stuff.zip (assuming it does not exist)
and puts all the files in the current directory in it, in
compressed form (the .zip suffix is added automatically,
unless the archive name contains a dot already; this allows the
explicit specification of other suffixes).
Because of the way the shell on Unix does filename substitution,
files starting with "." are not included; to include these as
well:
zip stuff .* *
Even this will not include any subdirectories from the current
directory.
To zip up an entire directory, the command:
zip -r foo foo
creates the archive foo.zip, containing all the files and
directories in the directory foo that is contained within
the current directory.
You may want to make a zip archive that contains the files
in foo, without recording the directory name, foo.
You can use the -j option to leave off the paths, as in:
zip -j foo foo/*
If you are short on disk space, you might not have enough room to
hold both the original directory and the corresponding compressed
zip archive. In this case, you can create the archive in
steps using the -m option. If foo contains the
subdirectories tom, dick, and harry, you
can:
zip -rm foo foo/tom
zip -rm foo foo/dick
zip -rm foo foo/harry
where the first command creates foo.zip, and the next two
add to it. At the completion of each zip command, the last
created archive is deleted, making room for the next zip
command to function.
Use -s to set the split size and create a split archive.
The size is given as a number followed optionally by one of k
(kB), m (MB), g (GB), or t (TB). The command
zip -s 2g -r split.zip foo
creates a split archive of the directory foo with splits no
bigger than 2 GB each. If foo contained 5 GB of
contents and the contents were stored in the split archive
without compression (to make this example simple), this would
create three splits, split.z01 at 2 GB, split.z02 at
2 GB, and split.zip at a little over 1 GB.
The -sp option can be used to pause zip between
splits to allow changing removable media, for example, but read
the descriptions and warnings for both -s and -sp
below.
Though zip does not update split archives, zip
provides the new option -O (--output-file) to allow
split archives to be updated and saved in a new archive. For
example,
zip inarchive.zip foo.c bar.c --out outarchive.zip
reads archive inarchive.zip, even if split, adds the files
foo.c and bar.c, and writes the resulting archive
to outarchive.zip. If inarchive.zip is split then
outarchive.zip defaults to the same split size. Be aware
that outarchive.zip and any split files that are created
with it are always overwritten without warning. This may be
changed in the future.
source
How to "unextract" a zip file?
You can use unzip -lqq <filename.zip>
to list
the contents of the zip file; this will include some extraneous
info that you'll need to filter out, though. Here's a command
that works for me:
unzip -lqq file.zip | awk '{print $4;}' | xargs rm -rf
The awk
command extracts just the names of the files
and directories. Then the result gets passed to
xargs
to delete everything. I suggest doing a
dry-run of the command (i.e., by omitting the xargs rm
-rf
part) first to make sure the results are correct.
The above command will have issues dealing with paths that have
whitespace. This (more complicated) version should fix that:
unzip -lqq file.zip | awk '{$1=$2=$3=""; sub(/ */, "", $0); printf "%s%s", $0, "\0"}' | xargs -0 rm -rf
source
Which is more efficient - tar or zip compression? What is the difference between tar and zip?
tar
only makes a single file out of multiple files,
it doesn't do compression unless combined a compression program
such as gzip
or bzip2
(which you can
call from within tar
by using the -z
or
-j
options, respectively). zip
combines
both the archiving and compression in one program.
source
How can I create a zip / tgz in Linux such that Windows has proper filenames?
As far as I know, Windows NT series (XP, Vista, others) use
Unicode for storing the file names. So I'm guessing it's a
problem with the Windows' archiver... which one are you using?
source
On Linux/Unix, does .tar.gz versus .zip matter?
tar
and gzip
are a lot more common on
*nix-es than unzip
. For instance, at the moment on
my arch-2009.08 there is no unzip
.
source
Which archiving method is better for compressing text files on Linux?
Normally, bz2 has a better compression ratio, combined with
better recoverability features.
OTOH, gz is faster.
xz is said to be even better than bz2, but I don't know the
timing behaviour.
source
terminal tool (linux) for repair corrupted zip files
I'm not aware of a program that will do a better job repairing
the archive though.
You might try
unzip -vt file.zip
just to see if maybe you can extract some of the files safely, or
figure out which files in the archive are corrupt.
source
How to create a zip file compatible with Windows under Linux
Only thing that looks relevant is this
-k - Attempt to convert the names and paths to conform to MSDOS, store only the MSDOS attribute (just the user write attribute from UNIX), and mark the entry as made under
MSDOS (even though it was not); for compatibility with PKUNZIP under MSDOS which cannot handle certain names such as those with two dots.
but do read "man zip" on your system before going anywhere
else...
source
Best Secure Encryption for Zip Files via Linux
Not sure about the standard zip in Ubuntu, so I can't say which
is 'best', but here's what
7-Zip claims they use:
7-Zip also supports encryption with AES-256 algorithm. This
algorithm uses cipher key with length of 256 bits. To create
that key 7-Zip uses derivation function based on SHA-256 hash
algorithm. A key derivation function produces a derived key
from text password defined by user. For increasing the cost of
exhaustive search for passwords 7-Zip uses big number of
iterations to produce cipher key from text password.
source
Read the contents of a zipped file without extraction?
If the file is included in zip archive, that you need to extract
only that file from archive (may depend on archive type, some
archives can't extract files seperately)
description
zip is a
compression and file packaging utility for Unix, VMS, MSDOS,
OS/2, Windows 9x/NT/XP, Minix, Atari, Macintosh, Amiga, and
Acorn RISC OS. It is analogous to a combination of the Unix
commands tar(1) and compress(1) and is
compatible with PKZIP (Phil Katz’s ZIP for MSDOS
systems).
A companion
program (unzip(1)) unpacks zip archives. The
zip and unzip(1) programs can work with
archives produced by PKZIP (supporting most PKZIP features
up to PKZIP version 4.6), and PKZIP and PKUNZIP can work
with archives produced by zip (with some exceptions,
notably streamed archives, but recent changes in the zip
file standard may facilitate better compatibility).
zip version 3.0 is compatible with PKZIP 2.04 and
also supports the Zip64 extensions of PKZIP 4.5 which allow
archives as well as files to exceed the previous 2 GB limit
(4 GB in some cases). zip also now supports
bzip2 compression if the bzip2 library is
included when zip is compiled. Note that PKUNZIP 1.10
cannot extract files produced by PKZIP 2.04 or
zip 3.0. You must use PKUNZIP 2.04g or
unzip 5.0p1 (or later versions) to extract
them.
See the
EXAMPLES section at the bottom of this page for
examples of some typical uses of zip.
Large Archives and Zip64.
zip automatically uses the Zip64 extensions when
files larger than 4 GB are added to an archive, an archive
containing Zip64 entries is updated (if the resulting
archive still needs Zip64), the size of the archive will
exceed 4 GB, or when the number of entries in the archive
will exceed about 64K. Zip64 is also used for archives
streamed from standard input as the size of such archives
are not known in advance, but the option
-fz- can be used to force zip to
create PKZIP 2 compatible archives (as long as Zip64
extensions are not needed). You must use a PKZIP 4.5
compatible unzip, such as unzip 6.0 or later, to
extract files using the Zip64 extensions.
In addition,
streamed archives, entries encrypted with standard
encryption, or split archives created with the pause option
may not be compatible with PKZIP as data descriptors are
used and PKZIP at the time of this writing does not support
data descriptors (but recent changes in the PKWare published
zip standard now include some support for the data
descriptor format zip uses).
Mac OS
X. Though previous Mac versions had their own zip
port, zip supports Mac OS X as part of the Unix port
and most Unix features apply. References to
"MacOS" below generally refer to MacOS versions
older than OS X. Support for some Mac OS features in the
Unix Mac OS X port, such as resource forks, is expected in
the next zip release.
For a brief
help on zip and unzip, run each without
specifying any parameters on the command line.
options
--ascii
[Systems using EBCDIC]
Translate file to ASCII format.
--adjust-sfx
Adjust self-extracting
executable archive. A self-extracting executable archive is
created by prepending the SFX stub to an existing archive.
The -A option tells zip to adjust the
entry offsets stored in the archive to take into account
this "preamble" data.
Note:
self-extracting archives for the Amiga are a special case.
At present, only the Amiga port of zip is capable of
adjusting or updating these without corrupting them. -J can
be used to remove the SFX stub if other updates need to be
made.
--archive-clear
[WIN32] Once archive is created
(and tested if -T is used, which is
recommended), clear the archive bits of files processed.
WARNING: Once the bits are cleared they are cleared. You may
want to use the -sf show files option to store
the list of files processed in case the archive operation
must be repeated. Also consider using the -MM
must match option. Be sure to check out -DF as
a possibly better way to do incremental backups.
--archive-set
[WIN32] Only include files that
have the archive bit set. Directories are not stored when
-AS is used, though by default the paths of
entries, including directories, are stored as usual and can
be used by most unzips to recreate directories.
The archive bit
is set by the operating system when a file is modified and,
if used with -AC, -AS can provide
an incremental backup capability. However, other
applications can modify the archive bit and it may not be a
reliable indicator of which files have changed since the
last archive operation. Alternative ways to create
incremental backups are using -t to use file
dates, though this won’t catch old files copied to
directories being archived, and -DF to create a
differential archive.
--binary
[VM/CMS and MVS] force file to
be read binary (default is text).
-Bn
[TANDEM] set Edit/Enscribe formatting options with n
defined as
bit 0: Don’t add
delimiter (Edit/Enscribe)
bit 1: Use LF rather than CR/LF as delimiter (Edit/Enscribe)
bit 2: Space fill record to maximum record length (Enscribe)
bit 3: Trim trailing space (Enscribe)
bit 8: Force 30K (Expand) large read for unstructured
files
-b path
--temp-path path
Use the specified path
for the temporary zip archive. For example:
zip -b /tmp
stuff *
will put the
temporary zip archive in the directory /tmp,
copying over stuff.zip to the current directory when
done. This option is useful when updating an existing
archive and the file system containing this old archive does
not have enough space to hold both old and new archives at
the same time. It may also be useful when streaming in some
cases to avoid the need for data descriptors. Note that
using this option may require zip take additional
time to copy the archive file when done to the destination
file system.
--entry-comments
Add one-line comments for each
file. File operations (adding, updating) are done first, and
the user is then prompted for a one-line comment for each
file. Enter the comment followed by return, or just return
for no comment.
--preserve-case
[VMS] Preserve case all on VMS.
Negating this option (-C-) downcases.
--preserve-case-2
[VMS] Preserve case ODS2 on
VMS. Negating this option (-C2-) downcases.
--preserve-case-5
[VMS] Preserve case ODS5 on
VMS. Negating this option (-C5-) downcases.
--delete
Remove (delete) entries from a
zip archive. For example:
zip -d foo
foo/tom/junk foo/harry/\* \*.o
will remove the
entry foo/tom/junk, all of the files that start with
foo/harry/, and all of the files that end with
.o (in any path). Note that shell pathname expansion
has been inhibited with backslashes, so that zip can
see the asterisks, enabling zip to match on the
contents of the zip archive instead of the contents
of the current directory. (The backslashes are not used on
MSDOS-based platforms.) Can also use quotes to escape the
asterisks as in
zip -d foo
foo/tom/junk "foo/harry/*"
"*.o"
Not escaping
the asterisks on a system where the shell expands wildcards
could result in the asterisks being converted to a list of
files in the current directory and that list used to delete
entries from the archive.
Under MSDOS,
-d is case sensitive when it matches names in
the zip archive. This requires that file names be
entered in upper case if they were zipped by PKZIP on an
MSDOS system. (We considered making this case insensitive on
systems where paths were case insensitive, but it is
possible the archive came from a system where case does
matter and the archive could include both Bar and
bar as separate files in the archive.) But see the
new option -ic to ignore case in the
archive.
--display-bytes
Display running byte counts
showing the bytes zipped and the bytes to go.
--display-counts
Display running count of
entries zipped and entries to go.
--display-dots
Display dots while each entry
is zipped (except on ports that have their own progress
indicator). See -ds below for setting dot size. The
default is a dot every 10 MB of input file processed. The
-v option also displays dots (previously at a much
higher rate than this but now -v also defaults
to 10 MB) and this rate is also controlled by
-ds.
--datafork
[MacOS] Include only data-fork
of files zipped into the archive. Good for exporting files
to foreign operating-systems. Resource-forks will be ignored
at all.
--display-globaldots
Display progress dots for the
archive instead of for each file. The command
zip -qdgds
10m
will turn off
most output except dots every 10 MB.
-ds size
--dot-size size
Set amount of input file
processed for each dot displayed. See -dd to enable
displaying dots. Setting this option implies -dd.
Size is in the format nm where n is a number and m is a
multiplier. Currently m can be k (KB), m (MB), g (GB), or t
(TB), so if n is 100 and m is k, size would be 100k which is
100 KB. The default is 10 MB.
The -v
option also displays dots and now defaults to 10 MB also.
This rate is also controlled by this option. A size of 0
turns dots off.
This option
does not control the dots from the "Scanning
files" message as zip scans for input files. The
dot size for that is fixed at 2 seconds or a fixed number of
entries, whichever is longer.
--display-usize
Display the uncompressed size
of each entry.
--display-volume
Display the volume (disk)
number each entry is being read from, if reading an existing
archive, and being written to.
--no-dir-entries
Do not create entries in the
zip archive for directories. Directory entries are
created by default so that their attributes can be saved in
the zip archive. The environment variable ZIPOPT can be used
to change the default options. For example under Unix with
sh:
ZIPOPT="-D";
export ZIPOPT
(The variable
ZIPOPT can be used for any option, including -i
and -x using a new option format detailed
below, and can include several options.) The option
-D is a shorthand for -x
"*/" but the latter previously could not be set as
default in the ZIPOPT environment variable as the contents
of ZIPOPT gets inserted near the beginning of the command
line and the file list had to end at the end of the
line.
This version of
zip does allow -x and -i
options in ZIPOPT if the form
-x file file ... @
is used, where
the @ (an argument that is just @) terminates the list.
--difference-archive
Create an archive that contains
all new and changed files since the original archive was
created. For this to work, the input file list and current
directory must be the same as during the original zip
operation.
For example, if
the existing archive was created using
zip -r
foofull .
from the
bar directory, then the command
zip -r
foofull . -DF --out foonew
also from the
bar directory creates the archive foonew with
just the files not in foofull and the files where the
size or file time of the files do not match those in
foofull.
Note that the
timezone environment variable TZ should be set according to
the local timezone in order for this option to work
correctly. A change in timezone since the original archive
was created could result in no times matching and all files
being included.
A possible
approach to backing up a directory might be to create a
normal archive of the contents of the directory as a full
backup, then use this option to create incremental
backups.
--encrypt
Encrypt the contents of the
zip archive using a password which is entered on the
terminal in response to a prompt (this will not be echoed;
if standard error is not a tty, zip will exit with an
error). The password prompt is repeated to save the user
from typing errors.
--longnames
[OS/2] Use the .LONGNAME
Extended Attribute (if found) as filename.
--freshen
Replace (freshen) an existing
entry in the zip archive only if it has been modified
more recently than the version already in the zip
archive; unlike the update option (-u) this
will not add files that are not already in the zip
archive. For example:
zip -f
foo
This command
should be run from the same directory from which the
original zip command was run, since paths stored in
zip archives are always relative.
Note that the
timezone environment variable TZ should be set according to
the local timezone in order for the -f,
-u and -o options to work
correctly.
The reasons
behind this are somewhat subtle but have to do with the
differences between the Unix-format file times (always in
GMT) and most of the other operating systems (always local
time) and the necessity to compare the two. A typical TZ
value is ’’MET-1MEST’’ (Middle
European time with automatic adjustment for
’’summertime’’ or Daylight Savings
Time).
The format is
TTThhDDD, where TTT is the time zone such as MET, hh is the
difference between GMT and local time such as -1 above, and
DDD is the time zone when daylight savings time is in
effect. Leave off the DDD if there is no daylight savings
time. For the US Eastern time zone EST5EDT.
--fix
--fixfix
Fix the zip archive. The
-F option can be used if some portions of the
archive are missing, but requires a reasonably intact
central directory. The input archive is scanned as usual,
but zip will ignore some problems. The resulting
archive should be valid, but any inconsistent entries will
be left out.
When doubled as
in -FF, the archive is scanned from the
beginning and zip scans for special signatures to
identify the limits between the archive members. The single
-F is more reliable if the archive is not too
much damaged, so try this option first.
If the archive
is too damaged or the end has been truncated, you must use
-FF. This is a change from
zip 2.32, where the -F option is
able to read a truncated archive. The -F option
now more reliably fixes archives with minor damage and the
-FF option is needed to fix archives where
-F might have been sufficient before.
Neither option
will recover archives that have been incorrectly transferred
in ascii mode instead of binary. After the repair, the
-t option of unzip may show that some
files have a bad CRC. Such files cannot be recovered; you
can remove them from the archive using the -d
option of zip.
Note that
-FF may have trouble fixing archives that
include an embedded zip archive that was stored (without
compression) in the archive and, depending on the damage, it
may find the entries in the embedded archive rather than the
archive itself. Try -F first as it does not
have this problem.
The format of
the fix commands have changed. For example, to fix the
damaged archive foo.zip,
zip -F foo
--out foofix
tries to read
the entries normally, copying good entries to the new
archive foofix.zip. If this doesn’t work, as
when the archive is truncated, or if some entries you know
are in the archive are missed, then try
zip -FF foo
--out foofixfix
and compare the
resulting archive to the archive created by -F.
The -FF option may create an inconsistent
archive. Depending on what is damaged, you can then use the
-F option to fix that archive.
A split archive
with missing split files can be fixed using -F
if you have the last split of the archive (the .zip
file). If this file is missing, you must use
-FF to fix the archive, which will prompt you
for the splits you have.
Currently the
fix options can’t recover entries that have a bad
checksum or are otherwise damaged.
-FI
--fifo
[Unix] Normally zip skips reading any FIFOs
(named pipes) encountered, as zip can hang if the
FIFO is not being fed. This option tells zip to read
the contents of any FIFO it finds.
-FS
--filesync
Synchronize the contents of an
archive with the files on the OS. Normally when an archive
is updated, new files are added and changed files are
updated but files that no longer exist on the OS are not
deleted from the archive. This option enables a new mode
that checks entries in the archive against the file system.
If the file time and file size of the entry matches that of
the OS file, the entry is copied from the old archive
instead of being read from the file system and compressed.
If the OS file has changed, the entry is read and compressed
as usual. If the entry in the archive does not match a file
on the OS, the entry is deleted. Enabling this option should
create archives that are the same as new archives, but since
existing entries are copied instead of compressed, updating
an existing archive with -FS can be much faster
than creating a new archive. Also consider using
-u for updating an archive.
For this option
to work, the archive should be updated from the same
directory it was created in so the relative paths match. If
few files are being copied from the old archive, it may be
faster to create a new archive instead.
Note that the
timezone environment variable TZ should be set according to
the local timezone in order for this option to work
correctly. A change in timezone since the original archive
was created could result in no times matching and
recompression of all files.
This option
deletes files from the archive. If you need to preserve the
original archive, make a copy of the archive first or use
the --out option to output the updated
archive to a new file. Even though it may be slower,
creating a new archive with a new archive name is safer,
avoids mismatches between archive and OS paths, and is
preferred.
--grow
Grow (append to) the specified
zip archive, instead of creating a new one. If this
operation fails, zip attempts to restore the archive
to its original state. If the restoration fails, the archive
might become corrupted. This option is ignored when
there’s no existing archive or when at least one
archive member must be updated or deleted.
--help
Display the zip help
information (this also appears if zip is run with no
arguments).
--more-help
Display extended help including
more on command line format, pattern matching, and more
obscure options.
-i files
--include files
Include only the specified
files, as in:
zip -r foo
. -i \*.c
which will
include only the files that end in .c in the current
directory and its subdirectories. (Note for PKZIP users: the
equivalent command is
pkzip -rP
foo *.c
PKZIP does not
allow recursion in directories other than the current one.)
The backslash avoids the shell filename substitution, so
that the name matching is performed by zip at all
directory levels. [This is for Unix and other systems where
\ escapes the next character. For other systems where the
shell does not process * do not use \ and the above is
zip -r foo
. -i *.c
Examples are
for Unix unless otherwise specified.] So to include dir, a
directory directly under the current directory, use
zip -r foo
. -i dir/\*
or
zip -r foo
. -i "dir/*"
to match paths
such as dir/a and dir/b/file.c [on ports without wildcard
expansion in the shell such as MSDOS and Windows
zip -r foo
. -i dir/*
is used.] Note
that currently the trailing / is needed for directories (as
in
zip -r foo
. -i dir/
to include
directory dir).
The long option
form of the first example is
zip -r foo
. --include \*.c
and does the
same thing as the short option form.
Though the
command syntax used to require -i at the end of the
command line, this version actually allows -i
(or --include) anywhere. The list of
files terminates at the next argument starting with
-, the end of the command line, or the list
terminator @ (an argument that is just @). So the
above can be given as
zip -i \*.c @
-r foo .
for example.
There must be a space between the option and the first file
of a list. For just one file you can use the single value
form
zip -i\*.c
-r foo .
(no space
between option and value) or
zip
--include=\*.c -r foo .
as additional
examples. The single value forms are not recommended because
they can be confusing and, in particular, the
-ifile format can cause problems if the first
letter of file combines with i to form a
two-letter option starting with i. Use
-sc to see how your command line will be
parsed.
Also
possible:
zip -r foo
. -i[:at:]include[:dot:]lst
which will only
include the files in the current directory and its
subdirectories that match the patterns in the file
include.lst.
Files to
-i and -x are patterns matching
internal archive paths. See -R for more on
patterns.
--no-image
[Acorn RISC OS] Don’t
scan through Image files. When used, zip will not
consider Image files (eg. DOS partitions or Spark archives
when SparkFS is loaded) as directories but will store them
as single files.
For example, if
you have SparkFS loaded, zipping a Spark archive will result
in a zipfile containing a directory (and its content) while
using the ’I’ option will result in a zipfile
containing a Spark archive. Obviously this second case will
also be obtained (without the ’I’ option) if
SparkFS isn’t loaded.
--ignore-case
[VMS, WIN32] Ignore case when
matching archive entries. This option is only available on
systems where the case of files is ignored. On systems with
case-insensitive file systems, case is normally ignored when
matching files on the file system but is not ignored for -f
(freshen), -d (delete), -U (copy), and similar modes when
matching against archive entries (currently -f ignores case
on VMS) because archive entries can be from systems where
case does matter and names that are the same except for case
can exist in an archive. The -ic option makes
all matching case insensitive. This can result in multiple
archive entries matching a command line pattern.
--junk-paths
Store just the name of a saved
file (junk the path), and do not store directory names. By
default, zip will store the full path (relative to
the current directory).
--absolute-path
[MacOS] record Fullpath (+
Volname). The complete path including volume will be stored.
By default the relative path will be stored.
--junk-sfx
Strip any prepended data (e.g.
a SFX stub) from the archive.
--DOS-names
Attempt to convert the names
and paths to conform to MSDOS, store only the MSDOS
attribute (just the user write attribute from Unix), and
mark the entry as made under MSDOS (even though it was not);
for compatibility with PKUNZIP under MSDOS which cannot
handle certain names such as those with two dots.
--to-crlf
Translate the Unix end-of-line
character LF into the MSDOS convention CR LF. This option
should not be used on binary files. This option can be used
on Unix if the zip file is intended for PKUNZIP under MSDOS.
If the input files already contain CR LF, this option adds
an extra CR. This is to ensure that unzip -a on Unix
will get back an exact copy of the original file, to undo
the effect of zip -l. See -ll for how binary
files are handled.
--log-append
Append to existing logfile.
Default is to overwrite.
-lf logfilepath
--logfile-path logfilepath
Open a logfile at the given
path. By default any existing file at that location is
overwritten, but the -la option will result in
an existing file being opened and the new log information
appended to any existing information. Only warnings and
errors are written to the log unless the -li
option is also given, then all information messages are also
written to the log.
--log-info
Include information messages,
such as file names being zipped, in the log. The default is
to only include the command line, any warnings and errors,
and the final status.
--from-crlf
Translate the MSDOS end-of-line
CR LF into Unix LF. This option should not be used on binary
files. This option can be used on MSDOS if the zip file is
intended for unzip under Unix. If the file is converted and
the file is later determined to be binary a warning is
issued and the file is probably corrupted. In this release
if -ll detects binary in the first buffer read from a
file, zip now issues a warning and skips line end
conversion on the file. This check seems to catch all binary
files tested, but the original check remains and if a
converted file is later determined to be binary that warning
is still issued. A new algorithm is now being used for
binary detection that should allow line end conversion of
text files in UTF-8 and similar encodings.
--license
Display the zip
license.
--move
Move the specified files into
the zip archive; actually, this deletes the target
directories/files after making the specified zip
archive. If a directory becomes empty after removal of the
files, the directory is also removed. No deletions are done
until zip has created the archive without error. This
is useful for conserving disk space, but is potentially
dangerous so it is recommended to use it in combination with
-T to test the archive before removing all
input files.
--must-match
All input patterns must match
at least one file and all input files found must be
readable. Normally when an input pattern does not match a
file the "name not matched" warning is issued and
when an input file has been found but later is missing or
not readable a missing or not readable warning is issued. In
either case zip continues creating the archive, with
missing or unreadable new files being skipped and files
already in the archive remaining unchanged. After the
archive is created, if any files were not readable
zip returns the OPEN error code (18 on most systems)
instead of the normal success return (0 on most systems).
With -MM set, zip exits as soon as an
input pattern is not matched (whenever the "name not
matched" warning would be issued) or when an input file
is not readable. In either case zip exits with an
OPEN error and no archive is created.
This option is
useful when a known list of files is to be zipped so any
missing or unreadable files will result in an error. It is
less useful when used with wildcards, but zip will
still exit with an error if any input pattern doesn’t
match at least one file and if any matched files are
unreadable. If you want to create the archive anyway and
only need to know if files were skipped, don’t use
-MM and just check the return code. Also
-lf could be useful.
-n suffixes
--suffixes suffixes
Do not attempt to compress
files named with the given suffixes. Such files are
simply stored (0% compression) in the output zip file, so
that zip doesn’t waste its time trying to
compress them. The suffixes are separated by either colons
or semicolons. For example:
zip -rn
.Z:.zip:.tiff:.gif:.snd foo foo
will copy
everything from foo into foo.zip, but will
store any files that end in .Z, .zip,
.tiff, .gif, or .snd without trying to
compress them (image and sound files often have their own
specialized compression methods). By default, zip
does not compress files with extensions in the list
.Z:.zip:.zoo:.arc:.lzh:.arj. Such files are stored
directly in the output archive. The environment variable
ZIPOPT can be used to change the default options. For
example under Unix with csh:
setenv ZIPOPT
"-n .gif:.zip"
To attempt
compression on all files, use:
zip -n :
foo
The maximum
compression option -9 also attempts compression
on all files regardless of extension.
On Acorn RISC
OS systems the suffixes are actually filetypes (3 hex digit
format). By default, zip does not compress files with
filetypes in the list DDC:D96:68E (i.e. Archives, CFS files
and PackDir files).
--no-wild
Do not perform internal
wildcard processing (shell processing of wildcards is still
done by the shell unless the arguments are escaped). Useful
if a list of paths is being read and no wildcard
substitution is desired.
--notes
[Amiga, MacOS] Save Amiga or
MacOS filenotes as zipfile comments. They can be restored by
using the -N option of unzip. If -c is used also, you
are prompted for comments only for those files that do not
have filenotes.
--latest-time
Set the "last
modified" time of the zip archive to the latest
(oldest) "last modified" time found among the
entries in the zip archive. This can be used without
any other operations, if desired. For example:
zip -o
foo
will change the
last modified time of foo.zip to the latest time of
the entries in foo.zip.
-O output-file
--output-file output-file
Process the archive changes as
usual, but instead of updating the existing archive, output
the new archive to output-file. Useful for updating an
archive without changing the existing archive and the input
archive must be a different file than the output
archive.
This option can
be used to create updated split archives. It can also be
used with -U to copy entries from an existing
archive to a new archive. See the EXAMPLES section
below.
Another use is
converting zip files from one split size to another.
For instance, to convert an archive with 700 MB CD splits to
one with 2 GB DVD splits, can use:
zip -s 2g
cd-split.zip --out dvd-split.zip
which uses copy
mode. See -U below. Also:
zip -s 0
split.zip --out unsplit.zip
will convert a
split archive to a single-file archive.
Copy mode will
convert stream entries (using data descriptors and which
should be compatible with most unzips) to normal entries
(which should be compatible with all unzips), except if
standard encryption was used. For archives with encrypted
entries, zipcloak will decrypt the entries and
convert them to normal entries.
--paths
Include relative file paths as
part of the names of files stored in the archive. This is
the default. The -j option junks the paths and
just stores the names of the files.
-P password
--password password
Use password to encrypt
zipfile entries (if any). THIS IS INSECURE! Many
multi-user operating systems provide ways for any user to
see the current command line of any other user; even on
stand-alone systems there is always the threat of
over-the-shoulder peeking. Storing the plaintext password as
part of a command line in an automated script is even worse.
Whenever possible, use the non-echoing, interactive prompt
to enter passwords. (And where security is truly important,
use strong encryption such as Pretty Good Privacy instead of
the relatively weak standard encryption provided by zipfile
utilities.)
--quiet
Quiet mode; eliminate
informational messages and comment prompts. (Useful, for
example, in shell scripts and background tasks).
--Q-flag n
[QDOS] store information about
the file in the file header with n defined as
bit 0: Don’t add headers for any file
bit 1: Add headers for all files
bit 2: Don’t wait for interactive key press on
exit
--recurse-paths
Travel the directory structure
recursively; for example:
zip -r foo.zip
foo
or more
concisely
zip -r foo
foo
In this case,
all the files and directories in foo are saved in a
zip archive named foo.zip, including files
with names starting with ".", since the
recursion does not use the shell’s file-name
substitution mechanism. If you wish to include only a
specific subset of the files in directory foo and its
subdirectories, use the -i option to specify
the pattern of files to be included. You should not use
-r with the name ".*", since
that matches ".." which will attempt to zip
up the parent directory (probably not what was
intended).
Multiple source
directories are allowed as in
zip -r foo
foo1 foo2
which first
zips up foo1 and then foo2, going down each
directory.
Note that while
wildcards to -r are typically resolved while
recursing down directories in the file system, any -R,
-x, and -i wildcards are applied to internal
archive pathnames once the directories are scanned. To have
wildcards apply to files in subdirectories when recursing on
Unix and similar systems where the shell does wildcard
substitution, either escape all wildcards or put all
arguments with wildcards in quotes. This lets zip see
the wildcards and match files in subdirectories using them
as it recurses.
--recurse-patterns
Travel the directory structure
recursively starting at the current directory; for
example:
zip -R foo
"*.c"
In this case,
all the files matching *.c in the tree starting at
the current directory are stored into a zip archive
named foo.zip. Note that *.c will match
file.c, a/file.c and a/b/.c. More than
one pattern can be listed as separate arguments. Note for
PKZIP users: the equivalent command is
pkzip -rP
foo *.c
Patterns are
relative file paths as they appear in the archive, or will
after zipping, and can have optional wildcards in them. For
example, given the current directory is foo and under
it are directories foo1 and foo2 and in
foo1 is the file bar.c,
zip -R
foo/*
will zip up
foo, foo/foo1, foo/foo1/bar.c, and
foo/foo2.
zip -R
*/bar.c
will zip up
foo/foo1/bar.c. See the note for -r on
escaping wildcards.
--regex
[WIN32] Before zip 3.0,
regular expression list matching was enabled by default on
Windows platforms. Because of confusion resulting from the
need to escape "[" and "]" in names, it
is now off by default for Windows so "[" and
"]" are just normal characters in names. This
option enables [] matching again.
-s splitsize
--split-size splitsize
Enable creating a split archive
and set the split size. A split archive is an archive that
could be split over many files. As the archive is created,
if the size of the archive reaches the specified split size,
that split is closed and the next split opened. In general
all splits but the last will be the split size and the last
will be whatever is left. If the entire archive is smaller
than the split size a single-file archive is created.
Split archives
are stored in numbered files. For example, if the output
archive is named archive and three splits are
required, the resulting archive will be in the three files
archive.z01, archive.z02, and
archive.zip. Do not change the numbering of these
files or the archive will not be readable as these are used
to determine the order the splits are read.
Split size is a
number optionally followed by a multiplier. Currently the
number must be an integer. The multiplier can currently be
one of k (kilobytes), m (megabytes), g
(gigabytes), or t (terabytes). As 64k is the minimum
split size, numbers without multipliers default to
megabytes. For example, to create a split archive called
foo with the contents of the bar directory
with splits of 670 MB that might be useful for burning on
CDs, the command:
zip -s 670m -r
foo bar
could be
used.
Currently the
old splits of a split archive are not excluded from a new
archive, but they can be specifically excluded. If possible,
keep the input and output archives out of the path being
zipped when creating split archives.
Using
-s without -sp as above creates
all the splits where foo is being written, in this
case the current directory. This split mode updates the
splits as the archive is being created, requiring all splits
to remain writable, but creates split archives that are
readable by any unzip that supports split archives. See
-sp below for enabling split pause mode which
allows splits to be written directly to removable media.
The option
-sv can be used to enable verbose splitting and
provide details of how the splitting is being done. The
-sb option can be used to ring the bell when
zip pauses for the next split destination.
Split archives
cannot be updated, but see the -O
(--out) option for how a split archive
can be updated as it is copied to a new archive. A split
archive can also be converted into a single-file archive
using a split size of 0 or negating the -s
option:
zip -s 0
split.zip --out single.zip
Also see
-U (--copy) for more on
using copy mode.
--split-bell
If splitting and using split
pause mode, ring the bell when zip pauses for each
split destination.
--show-command
Show the command line starting
zip as processed and exit. The new command parser
permutes the arguments, putting all options and any values
associated with them before any non-option arguments. This
allows an option to appear anywhere in the command line as
long as any values that go with the option go with it. This
option displays the command line as zip sees it,
including any arguments from the environment such as from
the ZIPOPT variable. Where allowed, options later in
the command line can override options earlier in the command
line.
--show-files
Show the files that would be
operated on, then exit. For instance, if creating a new
archive, this will list the files that would be added. If
the option is negated, -sf-, output only
to an open log file. Screen display is not recommended for
large lists.
--show-options
Show all available options
supported by zip as compiled on the current system.
As this command reads the option table, it should include
all options. Each line includes the short option (if
defined), the long option (if defined), the format of any
value that goes with the option, if the option can be
negated, and a small description. The value format can be no
value, required value, optional value, single character
value, number value, or a list of values. The output of this
option is not intended to show how to use any option but
only show what options are available.
--split-pause
If splitting is enabled with
-s, enable split pause mode. This creates split
archives as -s does, but stream writing is used
so each split can be closed as soon as it is written and
zip will pause between each split to allow changing
split destination or media.
Though this
split mode allows writing splits directly to removable
media, it uses stream archive format that may not be
readable by some unzips. Before relying on splits created
with -sp, test a split archive with the unzip
you will be using.
To convert a
stream split archive (created with -sp) to a
standard archive see the --out
option.
--show-unicode
As -sf, but also
show Unicode version of the path if exists.
--show-just-unicode
As -sf, but only
show Unicode version of the path if exists, otherwise show
the standard version of the path.
--split-verbose
Enable various verbose messages
while splitting, showing how the splitting is being
done.
--system-hidden
[MSDOS, OS/2, WIN32 and ATARI]
Include system and hidden files.
[MacOS] Includes finder invisible files, which are ignored
otherwise.
-t mmddyyyy
--from-date mmddyyyy
Do not operate on files
modified prior to the specified date, where mm is the
month (00-12), dd is the day of the month (01-31),
and yyyy is the year. The ISO 8601 date
format yyyy-mm-dd is also accepted. For
example:
zip -rt
12071991 infamy foo
zip -rt
1991-12-07 infamy foo
will add all
the files in foo and its subdirectories that were
last modified on or after 7 December 1991, to the zip
archive infamy.zip.
-tt mmddyyyy
--before-date mmddyyyy
Do not operate on files
modified after or at the specified date, where mm is
the month (00-12), dd is the day of the month
(01-31), and yyyy is the year. The
ISO 8601 date format
yyyy-mm-dd is also accepted. For
example:
zip -rtt
11301995 infamy foo
zip -rtt
1995-11-30 infamy foo
will add all
the files in foo and its subdirectories that were
last modified before 30 November 1995, to the zip
archive infamy.zip.
--test
Test the integrity of the new
zip file. If the check fails, the old zip file is unchanged
and (with the -m option) no input files are
removed.
-TT cmd
--unzip-command cmd
Use command cmd instead of
’unzip -tqq’ to test an archive when the
-T option is used. On Unix, to use a copy of
unzip in the current directory instead of the standard
system unzip, could use:
zip archive
file1 file2 -T -TT "./unzip -tqq"
In cmd, {} is
replaced by the name of the temporary archive, otherwise the
name of the archive is appended to the end of the command.
The return code is checked for success (0 on Unix).
--update
Replace (update) an existing
entry in the zip archive only if it has been modified
more recently than the version already in the zip
archive. For example:
zip -u
stuff *
will add any
new files in the current directory, and update any files
which have been modified since the zip archive
stuff.zip was last created/modified (note that
zip will not try to pack stuff.zip into itself
when you do this).
Note that the
-u option with no input file arguments acts
like the -f (freshen) option.
--copy-entries
Copy entries from one archive
to another. Requires the --out option to
specify a different output file than the input archive. Copy
mode is the reverse of -d delete. When delete
is being used with --out, the selected
entries are deleted from the archive and all other entries
are copied to the new archive, while copy mode selects the
files to include in the new archive. Unlike -u
update, input patterns on the command line are matched
against archive entries only and not the file system files.
For instance,
zip
inarchive "*.c" --copy --out outarchive
copies entries
with names ending in .c from inarchive to
outarchive. The wildcard must be escaped on some
systems to prevent the shell from substituting names of
files from the file system which may have no relevance to
the entries in the archive.
If no input
files appear on the command line and
--out is used, copy mode is assumed:
zip
inarchive --out outarchive
This is useful
for changing split size for instance. Encrypting and
decrypting entries is not yet supported using copy mode. Use
zipcloak for that.
--unicode v
Determine what zip
should do with Unicode file names. zip 3.0, in
addition to the standard file path, now includes the
UTF-8 translation of the path if the entry path is not
entirely 7-bit ASCII. When an entry is missing the Unicode
path, zip reverts back to the standard file path. The
problem with using the standard path is this path is in the
local character set of the zip that created the entry, which
may contain characters that are not valid in the character
set being used by the unzip. When zip is reading an
archive, if an entry also has a Unicode path, zip now
defaults to using the Unicode path to recreate the standard
path using the current local character set.
This option can
be used to determine what zip should do with this
path if there is a mismatch between the stored standard path
and the stored UTF-8 path (which can happen if the standard
path was updated). In all cases, if there is a mismatch it
is assumed that the standard path is more current and
zip uses that. Values for v are
q - quit
if paths do not match
w - warn,
continue with standard path
i -
ignore, continue with standard path
n - no
Unicode, do not use Unicode paths
The default is
to warn and continue.
Characters that
are not valid in the current character set are escaped as
#Uxxxx and #Lxxxxxx, where x is an ASCII
character for a hex digit. The first is used if a 16-bit
character number is sufficient to represent the Unicode
character and the second if the character needs more than 16
bits to represent it’s Unicode character code. Setting
-UN to
e -
escape
as in
zip archive
-sU -UN=e
forces
zip to escape all characters that are not printable
7-bit ASCII.
Normally
zip stores UTF-8 directly in the standard path
field on systems where UTF-8 is the current character
set and stores the UTF-8 in the new extra fields
otherwise. The option
u -
UTF-8
as in
zip archive
dir -r -UN=UTF8
forces
zip to store UTF-8 as native in the archive.
Note that storing UTF-8 directly is the default on
Unix systems that support it. This option could be useful on
Windows systems where the escaped path is too large to be a
valid path and the UTF-8 version of the path is
smaller, but native UTF-8 is not backward compatible
on Windows systems.
--verbose
Verbose mode or print
diagnostic version info.
Normally, when
applied to real operations, this option enables the display
of a progress indicator during compression (see -dd
for more on dots) and requests verbose diagnostic info about
zipfile structure oddities.
However, when
-v is the only command line argument a
diagnostic screen is printed instead. This should now work
even if stdout is redirected to a file, allowing easy saving
of the information for sending with bug reports to Info-ZIP.
The version screen provides the help screen header with
program name, version, and release date, some pointers to
the Info-ZIP home and distribution sites, and shows
information about the target environment (compiler type and
version, OS version, compilation date and the enabled
optional features used to create the zip
executable).
--VMS-portable
[VMS] Save VMS file attributes.
(Files are truncated at EOF.) When a -V archive is unpacked
on a non-VMS system, some file types (notably Stream_LF text
files and pure binary files like fixed-512) should be
extracted intact. Indexed files and file types with embedded
record sizes (notably variable-length record types) will
probably be seen as corrupt elsewhere.
--VMS-specific
[VMS] Save VMS file attributes,
and all allocated blocks in a file, including any data
beyond EOF. Useful for moving ill-formed files among VMS
systems. When a -VV archive is unpacked on a non-VMS system,
almost all files will appear corrupt.
--VMS-versions
[VMS] Append the version number
of the files to the name, including multiple versions of
files. Default is to use only the most recent version of a
specified file.
--VMS-dot-versions
[VMS] Append the version number
of the files to the name, including multiple versions of
files, using the .nnn format. Default is to use only the
most recent version of a specified file.
--wild-stop-dirs
Wildcards match only at a
directory level. Normally zip handles paths as
strings and given the paths
/foo/bar/dir/file1.c
/foo/bar/file2.c
an input
pattern such as
/foo/bar/*
normally would
match both paths, the * matching dir/file1.c and
file2.c. Note that in the first case a directory
boundary (/) was crossed in the match. With -ws
no directory bounds will be included in the match, making
wildcards local to a specific directory level. So, with
-ws enabled, only the second path would be
matched.
When using
-ws, use ** to match across directory
boundaries as * does normally.
-x files
--exclude files
Explicitly exclude the
specified files, as in:
zip -r foo
foo -x \*.o
which will
include the contents of foo in foo.zip while
excluding all the files that end in .o. The backslash
avoids the shell filename substitution, so that the name
matching is performed by zip at all directory
levels.
Also
possible:
zip -r foo
foo -x[:at:]exclude[:dot:]lst
which will
include the contents of foo in foo.zip while
excluding all the files that match the patterns in the file
exclude.lst.
The long option
forms of the above are
zip -r foo
foo --exclude \*.o
and
zip -r foo
foo --exclude @exclude.lst
Multiple
patterns can be specified, as in:
zip -r foo
foo -x \*.o \*.c
If there is no
space between -x and the pattern, just one
value is assumed (no list):
zip -r foo
foo -x\*.o
See -i
for more on include and exclude.
--no-extra
Do not save extra file
attributes (Extended Attributes on OS/2, uid/gid and file
times on Unix). The zip format uses extra fields to include
additional information for each entry. Some extra fields are
specific to particular systems while others are applicable
to all systems. Normally when zip reads entries from
an existing archive, it reads the extra fields it knows,
strips the rest, and adds the extra fields applicable to
that system. With -X, zip strips all old
fields and only includes the Unicode and Zip64 extra fields
(currently these two extra fields cannot be disabled).
Negating this
option, -X-, includes all the default
extra fields, but also copies over any unrecognized extra
fields.
--symlinks
For UNIX and VMS (V8.3 and
later), store symbolic links as such in the zip
archive, instead of compressing and storing the file
referred to by the link. This can avoid multiple copies of
files being included in the archive as zip recurses
the directory trees and accesses files directly and by
links.
--archive-comment
Prompt for a multi-line comment
for the entire zip archive. The comment is ended by a
line containing just a period, or an end of file condition
(^D on Unix, ^Z on MSDOS, OS/2, and VMS). The comment can be
taken from a file:
zip -z foo
< foowhat
--compression-method cm
Set the default compression
method. Currently the main methods supported by zip
are store and deflate. Compression method can
be set to:
store
- Setting the compression method to store
forces zip to store entries with no compression. This
is generally faster than compressing entries, but results in
no space savings. This is the same as using -0
(compression level zero).
deflate
- This is the default method for zip. If
zip determines that storing is better than deflation,
the entry will be stored instead.
bzip2
- If bzip2 support is compiled in, this
compression method also becomes available. Only some modern
unzips currently support the bzip2 compression
method, so test the unzip you will be using before relying
on archives using this method (compression method 12).
For example, to
add bar.c to archive foo using bzip2
compression:
zip -Z bzip2
foo bar.c
The compression
method can be abbreviated:
zip -Zb foo
bar.c
(-0, -1,
-2, -3, -4, -5, -6, -7,
-8, -9)
Regulate the speed of
compression using the specified digit #, where
-0 indicates no compression (store all files),
-1 indicates the fastest compression speed
(less compression) and -9 indicates the slowest
compression speed (optimal compression, ignores the suffix
list). The default compression level is -6.
Though still
being worked, the intention is this setting will control
compression speed for all compression methods. Currently
only deflation is controlled.
--use-privileges
[WIN32] Use privileges (if
granted) to obtain all aspects of WinNT security.
--names-stdin
Take the list of input files
from standard input. Only one filename per line.
--volume-label
[MSDOS, OS/2, WIN32] Include
the volume label for the drive holding the first file to be
compressed. If you want to include only the volume label or
to force a specific drive, use the drive name as first file
name, as in:
zip -$ foo
a: c:bar
acknowledgements
Thanks to R. P. Byrne for his Shrink.Pas program, which
inspired this project, and from which the shrink algorithm was
stolen; to Phil Katz for placing in the public domain the
zip file format, compression format, and .ZIP filename
extension, and for accepting minor changes to the file format; to
Steve Burg for clarifications on the deflate format; to Haruhiko
Okumura and Leonid Broukhis for providing some useful ideas for
the compression algorithm; to Keith Petersen, Rich Wales, Hunter
Goatley and Mark Adler for providing a mailing list and
ftp site for the Info-ZIP group to use; and most
importantly, to the Info-ZIP group itself (listed in the file
infozip.who) without whose tireless testing and bug-fixing
efforts a portable zip would not have been possible.
Finally we should thank (blame) the first Info-ZIP moderator,
David Kirschbaum, for getting us into this mess in the first
place. The manual page was rewritten for Unix by R. P. C. Rodgers
and updated by E. Gordon for zip 3.0.
diagnostics
The exit status (or error level) approximates the exit codes
defined by PKWARE and takes on the following values, except under
VMS:
0
normal; no errors or warnings detected.
2
unexpected end of zip file.
3
a generic error in the zipfile format was detected. Processing
may have completed successfully anyway; some broken zipfiles
created by other archivers have simple work-arounds.
4
zip was unable to allocate memory for one or more buffers
during program initialization.
5
a severe error in the zipfile format was detected. Processing
probably failed immediately.
6
entry too large to be processed (such as input files larger than
2 GB when not using Zip64 or trying to read an existing archive
that is too large) or entry too large to be split with
zipsplit
7
invalid comment format
8
zip -T failed or out of memory
9
the user aborted zip prematurely with control-C (or
similar)
10
zip encountered an error while using a temp file
11
read or seek error
12
zip has nothing to do
13
missing or empty zip file
14
error writing to a file
15
zip was unable to create a file to write to
16
bad command line parameters
18
zip could not open a specified file to read
19
zip was compiled with options not supported on this system
VMS interprets standard Unix (or PC) return values as other,
scarier-looking things, so zip instead maps them into
VMS-style status codes. In general, zip sets VMS Facility
= 1955 (0x07A3), Code = 2* Unix_status, and an appropriate
Severity (as specified in ziperr.h). More details are included in
the VMS-specific documentation. See [.vms]NOTES.TXT and
[.vms]vms_msg_gen.c.
environment
The following environment variables are read and used by
zip as described.
ZIPOPT
contains default options that will be used when running
zip. The contents of this environment variable will get
added to the command line just after the zip command.
ZIP
[Not on RISC OS and VMS] see ZIPOPT
Zip$Options
[RISC OS] see ZIPOPT
Zip$Exts
[RISC OS] contains extensions separated by a : that will cause
native filenames with one of the specified extensions to be added
to the zip file with basename and extension swapped.
ZIP_OPTS
[VMS] see ZIPOPT
pattern matching
This section applies only to Unix. Watch this space for details
on MSDOS and VMS operation. However, the special wildcard
characters * and [] below apply to at least MSDOS
also.
The Unix shells (sh, csh, bash, and others)
normally do filename substitution (also called "globbing") on
command arguments. Generally the special characters are:
?
match any single character
*
match any number of characters (including none)
[]
match any character in the range indicated within the brackets
(example: [a-f], [0-9]). This form of wildcard matching allows a
user to specify a list of characters between square brackets and
if any of the characters match the expression matches. For
example:
zip archive "*.[hc]"
would archive all files in the current directory that end in
.h or .c.
Ranges of characters are supported:
zip archive "[a-f]*"
would add to the archive all files starting with "a" through "f".
Negation is also supported, where any character in that position
not in the list matches. Negation is supported by adding !
or ^ to the beginning of the list:
zip archive "*.[!o]"
matches files that don’t end in ".o".
On WIN32, [] matching needs to be turned on with the -RE option
to avoid the confusion that names with [ or ] have caused.
When these characters are encountered (without being escaped with
a backslash or quotes), the shell will look for files relative to
the current path that match the pattern, and replace the argument
with a list of the names that matched.
The zip program can do the same matching on names that are
in the zip archive being modified or, in the case of the
-x (exclude) or -i (include) options, on the list
of files to be operated on, by using backslashes or quotes to
tell the shell not to do the name expansion. In general, when
zip encounters a name in the list of files to do, it first
looks for the name in the file system. If it finds it, it then
adds it to the list of files to do. If it does not find it, it
looks for the name in the zip archive being modified (if
it exists), using the pattern matching characters described
above, if present. For each match, it will add that name to the
list of files to be processed, unless this name matches one given
with the -x option, or does not match any name given with
the -i option.
The pattern matching includes the path, and so patterns like \*.o
match names that end in ".o", no matter what the path prefix is.
Note that the backslash must precede every special character
(i.e. ?*[]), or the entire argument must be enclosed in double
quotes ("").
In general, use backslashes or double quotes for paths that have
wildcards to make zip do the pattern matching for file
paths, and always for paths and strings that have spaces or
wildcards for -i, -x, -R, -d, and
-U and anywhere zip needs to process the wildcards.
use
The program is useful for packaging a set of files for
distribution; for archiving files; and for saving disk space by
temporarily compressing unused files or directories.
The zip program puts one or more compressed files into a
single zip archive, along with information about the files
(name, path, date, time of last modification, protection, and
check information to verify file integrity). An entire directory
structure can be packed into a zip archive with a single
command. Compression ratios of 2:1 to 3:1 are common for text
files. zip has one compression method (deflation) and can
also store files without compression. (If bzip2 support is
added, zip can also compress using bzip2
compression, but such entries require a reasonably modern unzip
to decompress. When bzip2 compression is selected, it
replaces deflation as the default method.) zip
automatically chooses the better of the two (deflation or store
or, if bzip2 is selected, bzip2 or store) for each
file to be compressed.
Command format. The basic command format is
zip options archive inpath inpath ...
where archive is a new or existing zip archive and
inpath is a directory or file path optionally including
wildcards. When given the name of an existing zip archive,
zip will replace identically named entries in the
zip archive (matching the relative names as stored in the
archive) or add entries for new names. For example, if
foo.zip exists and contains foo/file1 and
foo/file2, and the directory foo contains the files
foo/file1 and foo/file3, then:
zip -r foo.zip foo
or more concisely
zip -r foo foo
will replace foo/file1 in foo.zip and add
foo/file3 to foo.zip. After this, foo.zip
contains foo/file1, foo/file2, and
foo/file3, with foo/file2 unchanged from before.
So if before the zip command is executed foo.zip has:
foo/file1 foo/file2
and directory foo has:
file1 file3
then foo.zip will have:
foo/file1 foo/file2 foo/file3
where foo/file1 is replaced and foo/file3 is new.
-@ file lists. If a file list is specified as
-@ [Not on MacOS], zip takes the list of input
files from standard input instead of from the command line. For
example,
zip -@ foo
will store the files listed one per line on stdin in
foo.zip.
Under Unix, this option can be used to powerful effect in
conjunction with the find (1) command. For example,
to archive all the C source files in the current directory and
its subdirectories:
find . -name "*.[ch]" -print | zip source -@
(note that the pattern must be quoted to keep the shell from
expanding it).
Streaming input and output. zip will
also accept a single dash ("-") as the zip file name, in which
case it will write the zip file to standard output, allowing the
output to be piped to another program. For example:
zip -r - . | dd of=/dev/nrst0 obs=16k
would write the zip output directly to a tape with the specified
block size for the purpose of backing up the current directory.
zip also accepts a single dash ("-") as the name of a file
to be compressed, in which case it will read the file from
standard input, allowing zip to take input from another program.
For example:
tar cf - . | zip backup -
would compress the output of the tar command for the purpose of
backing up the current directory. This generally produces better
compression than the previous example using the -r option because
zip can take advantage of redundancy between files. The
backup can be restored using the command
unzip -p backup | tar xf -
When no zip file name is given and stdout is not a terminal,
zip acts as a filter, compressing standard input to
standard output. For example,
tar cf - . | zip | dd of=/dev/nrst0 obs=16k
is equivalent to
tar cf - . | zip - - | dd of=/dev/nrst0 obs=16k
zip archives created in this manner can be extracted with
the program funzip which is provided in the unzip
package, or by gunzip which is provided in the gzip
package (but some gunzip may not support this if
zip used the Zip64 extensions). For example:
dd if=/dev/nrst0 ibs=16k | funzip | tar xvf -
The stream can also be saved to a file and unzip used.
If Zip64 support for large files and archives is enabled and
zip is used as a filter, zip creates a Zip64
archive that requires a PKZIP 4.5 or later compatible unzip to
read it. This is to avoid amgibuities in the zip file structure
as defined in the current zip standard (PKWARE AppNote) where the
decision to use Zip64 needs to be made before data is written for
the entry, but for a stream the size of the data is not known at
that point. If the data is known to be smaller than 4 GB, the
option -fz- can be used to prevent use of Zip64, but
zip will exit with an error if Zip64 was in fact needed.
zip 3 and unzip 6 and later can read
archives with Zip64 entries. Also, zip removes the Zip64
extensions if not needed when archive entries are copied (see the
-U (--copy) option).
When directing the output to another file, note that all options
should be before the redirection including -x. For
example:
zip archive "*.h" "*.c" -x donotinclude.h orthis.h > tofile
Zip files. When changing an existing zip
archive, zip will write a temporary file with the new
contents, and only replace the old one when the process of
creating the new version has been completed without error.
If the name of the zip archive does not contain an
extension, the extension .zip is added. If the name
already contains an extension other than .zip, the
existing extension is kept unchanged. However, split archives
(archives split over multiple files) require the .zip
extension on the last split.
Scanning and reading files. When zip
starts, it scans for files to process (if needed). If this scan
takes longer than about 5 seconds, zip will display a
"Scanning files" message and start displaying progress dots every
2 seconds or every so many entries processed, whichever takes
longer. If there is more than 2 seconds between dots it could
indicate that finding each file is taking time and could mean a
slow network connection for example. (Actually the initial file
scan is a two-step process where the directory scan is followed
by a sort and these two steps are separated with a space in the
dots. If updating an existing archive, a space also appears
between the existing file scan and the new file scan.) The
scanning files dots are not controlled by the -ds dot size
option, but the dots are turned off by the -q quiet
option. The -sf show files option can be used to scan for
files and get the list of files scanned without actually
processing them.
If zip is not able to read a file, it issues a warning but
continues. See the -MM option below for more on how
zip handles patterns that are not matched and files that
are not readable. If some files were skipped, a warning is issued
at the end of the zip operation noting how many files were read
and how many skipped.
Command modes. zip now supports two distinct
types of command modes, external and internal. The
external modes (add, update, and freshen) read files from
the file system (as well as from an existing archive) while the
internal modes (delete and copy) operate exclusively on
entries in an existing archive.
add
Update existing entries and add new files. If the archive does
not exist create it. This is the default mode.
update (-u)
Update existing entries if newer on the file system and add new
files. If the archive does not exist issue warning then create a
new archive.
freshen (-f)
Update existing entries of an archive if newer on the file
system. Does not add new files to the archive.
delete (-d)
Select entries in an existing archive and delete them.
copy (-U)
Select entries in an existing archive and copy them to a new
archive. This new mode is similar to update but command
line patterns select entries in the existing archive rather than
files from the file system and it uses the --out option to
write the resulting archive to a new file rather than update the
existing archive, leaving the original archive unchanged.
The new File Sync option (-FS) is also considered a new
mode, though it is similar to update. This mode
synchronizes the archive with the files on the OS, only replacing
files in the archive if the file time or size of the OS file is
different, adding new files, and deleting entries from the
archive where there is no matching file. As this mode can delete
entries from the archive, consider making a backup copy of the
archive.
Also see -DF for creating difference archives.
See each option description below for details and the
EXAMPLES section below for examples.
Split archives. zip version 3.0 and later can
create split archives. A split archive is a standard zip
archive split over multiple files. (Note that split archives are
not just archives split in to pieces, as the offsets of entries
are now based on the start of each split. Concatenating the
pieces together will invalidate these offsets, but unzip
can usually deal with it. zip will usually refuse to
process such a spliced archive unless the -FF fix option
is used to fix the offsets.)
One use of split archives is storing a large archive on multiple
removable media. For a split archive with 20 split files the
files are typically named (replace ARCHIVE with the name of your
archive) ARCHIVE.z01, ARCHIVE.z02, ..., ARCHIVE.z19, ARCHIVE.zip.
Note that the last file is the .zip file. In contrast,
spanned archives are the original multi-disk archive
generally requiring floppy disks and using volume labels to store
disk numbers. zip supports split archives but not spanned
archives, though a procedure exists for converting split archives
of the right size to spanned archives. The reverse is also true,
where each file of a spanned archive can be copied in order to
files with the above names to create a split archive.
Use -s to set the split size and create a split archive.
The size is given as a number followed optionally by one of k
(kB), m (MB), g (GB), or t (TB) (the default is m). The
-sp option can be used to pause zip between splits
to allow changing removable media, for example, but read the
descriptions and warnings for both -s and -sp
below.
Though zip does not update split archives, zip
provides the new option -O (--output-file or
--out) to allow split archives to be updated and saved in
a new archive. For example,
zip inarchive.zip foo.c bar.c --out outarchive.zip
reads archive inarchive.zip, even if split, adds the files
foo.c and bar.c, and writes the resulting archive
to outarchive.zip. If inarchive.zip is split then
outarchive.zip defaults to the same split size. Be aware
that if outarchive.zip and any split files that are
created with it already exist, these are always overwritten as
needed without warning. This may be changed in the future.
Unicode. Though the zip standard requires storing paths in
an archive using a specific character set, in practice zips have
stored paths in archives in whatever the local character set is.
This creates problems when an archive is created or updated on a
system using one character set and then extracted on another
system using a different character set. When compiled with
Unicode support enabled on platforms that support wide
characters, zip now stores, in addition to the standard
local path for backward compatibility, the UTF-8 translation of
the path. This provides a common universal character set for
storing paths that allows these paths to be fully extracted on
other systems that support Unicode and to match as close as
possible on systems that don’t.
On Win32 systems where paths are internally stored as Unicode but
represented in the local character set, it’s possible that some
paths will be skipped during a local character set directory
scan. zip with Unicode support now can read and store
these paths. Note that Win 9x systems and FAT file systems don’t
fully support Unicode.
Be aware that console windows on Win32 and Unix, for example,
sometimes don’t accurately show all characters due to how each
operating system switches in character sets for display. However,
directory navigation tools should show the correct paths if the
needed fonts are loaded.
Command line format. This version of zip has
updated command line processing and support for long options.
Short options take the form
-s[-][s[-]...][value][=value][ value]
where s is a one or two character short option. A short option
that takes a value is last in an argument and anything after it
is taken as the value. If the option can be negated and "-"
immediately follows the option, the option is negated. Short
options can also be given as separate arguments
-s[-][value][=value][ value] -s[-][value][=value][ value] ...
Short options in general take values either as part of the same
argument or as the following argument. An optional = is also
supported. So
-ttmmddyyyy
and
-tt=mmddyyyy
and
-tt mmddyyyy
all work. The -x and -i options accept lists of
values and use a slightly different format described below. See
the -x and -i options.
Long options take the form
--longoption[-][=value][ value]
where the option starts with --, has a multicharacter name, can
include a trailing dash to negate the option (if the option
supports it), and can have a value (option argument) specified by
preceding it with = (no spaces). Values can also follow the
argument. So
--before-date=mmddyyyy
and
--before-date mmddyyyy
both work.
Long option names can be shortened to the shortest unique
abbreviation. See the option descriptions below for which support
long options. To avoid confusion, avoid abbreviating a negatable
option with an embedded dash ("-") at the dash if you plan to
negate it (the parser would consider a trailing dash, such as for
the option --some-option using --some- as the
option, as part of the name rather than a negating dash). This
may be changed to force the last dash in --some- to be
negating in the future.
bugs
zip 3.0
is not compatible with PKUNZIP 1.10. Use zip 1.1 to
produce zip files which can be extracted by PKUNZIP
1.10.
zip
files produced by zip 3.0 must not be updated
by zip 1.1 or PKZIP 1.10, if they contain encrypted
members or if they have been produced in a pipe or on a
non-seekable device. The old versions of zip or PKZIP
would create an archive with an incorrect format. The old
versions can list the contents of the zip file but cannot
extract it anyway (because of the new compression
algorithm). If you do not use encryption and use regular
disk files, you do not have to care about this problem.
Under VMS, not
all of the odd file formats are treated properly. Only
stream-LF format zip files are expected to work with
zip. Others can be converted using Rahul
Dhesi’s BILF program. This version of zip
handles some of the conversion internally. When using Kermit
to transfer zip files from VMS to MSDOS, type "set file
type block" on VMS. When transferring from MSDOS to
VMS, type "set file type fixed" on VMS. In both
cases, type "set file type binary" on MSDOS.
Under some
older VMS versions, zip may hang for file
specifications that use DECnet syntax foo::*.*.
On OS/2, zip
cannot match some names, such as those including an
exclamation mark or a hash sign. This is a bug in OS/2
itself: the 32-bit DosFindFirst/Next don’t find such
names. Other programs such as GNU tar are also affected by
this bug.
Under OS/2, the
amount of Extended Attributes displayed by DIR is (for
compatibility) the amount returned by the 16-bit version of
DosQueryPathInfo(). Otherwise OS/2 1.3 and 2.0 would report
different EA sizes when DIRing a file. However, the
structure layout returned by the 32-bit DosQueryPathInfo()
is a bit different, it uses extra padding bytes and link
pointers (it’s a linked list) to have all fields on
4-byte boundaries for portability to future RISC OS/2
versions. Therefore the value reported by zip (which
uses this 32-bit-mode size) differs from that reported by
DIR. zip stores the 32-bit format for portability,
even the 16-bit MS-C-compiled version running on OS/2 1.3,
so even this one shows the 32-bit-mode size.
see also
compress,
shar, tar , unzip , gzip
authors
Copyright (C)
1997-2008 Info-ZIP.
Currently
distributed under the Info-ZIP license.
Copyright (C)
1990-1997 Mark Adler, Richard B. Wales, Jean-loup Gailly,
Onno van der Linden, Kai Uwe Rommel, Igor Mandrichenko, John
Bush and Paul Kienitz.
Original
copyright:
Permission is
granted to any individual or institution to use, copy, or
redistribute this software so long as all of the original
files are included, that it is not sold for profit, and that
this copyright notice is retained.
LIKE ANYTHING
ELSE THAT’S FREE, ZIP AND ITS ASSOCIATED UTILITIES ARE
PROVIDED AS IS AND COME WITH NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER
EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED. IN NO EVENT WILL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS
BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES RESULTING FROM THE USE OF THIS
SOFTWARE.
Please send bug
reports and comments using the web page at:
www.info-zip.org. For bug reports, please include the
version of zip (see zip -h), the
make options used to compile it (see
zip -v), the machine and operating system
in use, and as much additional information as possible.