How to unzip a zip file from the Terminal?

A zip file can be unzipped using the unzip command from the terminal.

If the unzip command isn’t already installed on your system, then run:

sudo apt-get install unzip

After installing the unzip utility, if you want to extract to a particular destination folder, you can use:

unzip file.zip -d destination_folder

If the source and destination directories are the same, you can simply do:

unzip file.zip

How to unzip a zip file from the Terminal?

You can simply use unzip.

Install it:

apt-get install unzip

And use it:

cd /path/to/file
unzip file.zip

If the source and destination directories are the same, you can simply do:

unzip filename.zip

Answer #3:

A more useful tool is 7z, which zips and unzips a range of compression formats, notably lzma, usually the protocol offering the highest compression rates.

This command installs 7z:

sudo apt-get install p7zip-full

This command lists the contents of the zip:

7z l zipfile.zip

This command extracts the contents of the zip:

7z x zipfile.zip

Answer #4:

You can use:

unzip file.zip -d somedir

to extract to yourpath/somedir

If you want to extract to an absolute path, use

sudo unzip file.zip -d /somedir

Answer #5:

Using scripting tools: Perl and Python

Many answers here mention tools that require installation, but nobody has mentioned that two of Ubuntu’s scripting languages, Perl and Python, already come with all the necessary modules that allow you to unzip a zip archive, which means you don’t need to install anything else. Just use either of the two scripts presented below to do the job. They’re fairly short and can even be condensed to a one-liner command if we wanted to.

Python

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import sys
from zipfile import PyZipFile
for zip_file in sys.argv[1:]:
    pzf = PyZipFile(zip_file)
    pzf.extractall()

Usage:

./pyunzip.py master.zip 

or

python3 pyunzip.py master.zip

Perl

#!/usr/bin/env perl
use Archive::Extract;
foreach my $filepath (@ARGV){
    my $archive = Archive::Extract->new( archive => $filepath );
    $archive->extract;
}

Usage:

./perlunzip master.zip

or

perl perlunzip.pl master.zip

Answer #6:

I prefer bsdtar to unzip/zip. For extracting, they are pretty similar:

bsdtar -x -f /one/two/three/four.zip -C /five
unzip /one/two/three/four.zip -d /five

However for zipping, bsdtar wins. Say you have this input:

/one/two/three/alfa/four.txt
/one/two/three/bravo/four.txt

and want this in the zip file:

alfa/four.txt
bravo/four.txt

This is easy with bsdtar:

bsdtar -a -c -f four.zip -C /one/two/three alfa bravo

zip does not have the -d option like unzip, so you have no way to achieve the above unless you cd first.

How to unzip a zip file from the Terminal?

Follow the following steps:

Install unzip

So First of all we need to install unzip on our system if it’s not installed. unzip command is used to extract files from a ZIP archive.

Run the following command to install unzip

sudo apt-get install unzip

unzip Syntax

$ unzip [-aCcfjLlnopqtuvy] [-d dir] zipfile

Now Follow the steps below:

UnZip File

OPTION 1 – If the Zip File is in the same directory/folder in which your terminal is and we want to extract it in the present working directory.

Use the following command to achieve the above described scenario

sudo unzip zip_file_name.zip

if the zip file is protected with some password, then use the following command :

sudo ubzip -P zip_file_name.zip

Please make sure you use -P (capital P) not -p because the are different options.

OPTION 2 – If the zip file is not present in the same directory and we want to extract/unzip the file in different directory.

Use the following command to achieve the above described scenario

sudo unzip path/filename.zip -d another_path_or_same_path

if we does not use option -d the file will be extracted to present working directory.

And if the zip file is password protected we can also use -P.

use tar Command in Linux / Unix

tar is an acronym for Tape Archive. tar command is used to Manipulates archives in Linux/Unix. System administrators uses tar command frequently to rip a bunch of files or directories into highly compressed archive which are called tarball or tar, bzip and gzip in Linux/Unix system.

tar Syntax

tar [OPTION...] [FILE]...

Or

tar required Flags

tar {-r|-t|-c|-x|-u}

tar optional Flags

tar {one of the required Flags} [ -d ][-B] [ -F ] [ -E ] [ -i ] [-h ] [ -l ] [ -m ] [ -o ] [ -p ] [ -w] [ -s ] [ -U ] [ -v ]
[-Number] [-b Blocks] [-f Archive]

Examples

Create tar Archive File by Compressing an Directory or a Single File

The terminal command below will create a .tar file called sample_dir.tar with a directory /home/codebind/sample_dir or sample_dir in present working directory.

ripon@ripon:~$  tar -cvf sample_dir.tar sample_dir
sample_dir/
sample_dir/main.cpp
sample_dir/sample.png
sample_dir/output
ripon@ripon:~$ ls
sample_dir sample_dir.tar

Here’s what those flags (-cvf) actually mean

-c, --create– create a new archive

-x, --extract, --get– extract files from an archive

-f, --file ARCHIVE– use archive file or device ARCHIVE

Create tar.gz or tgz Archive File by Compressing an Directory or a Single File

The terminal command below will create a .tar.gz file called sample_dir.tar.gz with a directory /home/codebind/sample_dir or sample_dir in present working directory.

Notice that we have added extra flag -z to the command.Here’s what the flag -z actually mean

-z, --gzip, --gunzip --ungzip– Compress the archive with gzip

ripon@ripon:~$ tar -cvzf sample_dir.tar.gz sample_dirsample_dir/
sample_dir/main.cpp
sample_dir/sample.png
sample_dir/output
ripon@ripon:~$ ls
sample_dir sample_dir.tar.gz

The command bellow will create a .tgz file. One this to notice is tar.gz and tgz both are similar.

ripon@ripon:~$ tar -cvzf sample_dir.tgz sample_dirsample_dir/
sample_dir/main.cpp
sample_dir/sample.png
sample_dir/output
ripon@ripon:~$ ls
sample_dir sample_dir.tgz

Compressing Multiple Directories or Files at Once

Let’s say, For example we want to compress the sample_dir directory, the java_test directory, and the abc.py file to a tar file called sample_dir.tar.gz.

Run the following command to achieve the goal above.

ripon@ripon:~$ tar -cvzf sample_dir.tar.gz sample_dir java_test abc.py
sample_dir/
sample_dir/main.cpp
sample_dir/sample.png
sample_dir/output
java_test/
java_test/HelloCV.java
abc.py
ripon@ripon:~$ ls
sample_dir java_test abc.py sample_dir.tar.gz

Create .bzip2 Archive File by Compressing an Directory or a Single File

ripon@ripon:~$ tar -cjvf sample_dir.tar.bz2 sample_dir
sample_dir/
sample_dir/main.cpp
sample_dir/sample.png
sample_dir/output
ripon@ripon:~$ 

Notice that we have added extra flag -f to the command.Here’s what the flag -f actually mean

-f, --file ARCHIVE– use archive file or device ARCHIVE

Extract .tar Archive File using terminal

We can extract or untar the compressed file using the tar command. The command below will extract the contents of sample_dir.tar to the present directory.

ripon@ripon:~$ tar -xvf sample_dir.tar
sample_dir/
sample_dir/main.cpp
sample_dir/sample.png
sample_dir/output
ripon@ripon:~$ 

The following command will extract or untar files in specified Directory i.e. /home/codebind/dir_name in this case.

ripon@ripon:~$ tar -xvf sample_dir.tar -C /home/codebind/dir_name
sample_dir/
sample_dir/main.cpp
sample_dir/sample.png
sample_dir/output
ripon@ripon:~$ 

we have added extra flag -C to the command.Here’s what the flag -C actually mean

-C, --directory DIR – change to directory DIR

Hope you learned something from this post.

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