zip(1)
ZIP(1L) MISC. REFERENCE MANUAL PAGES ZIP(1L)
NAME
zip - package and compress (archive) files
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.
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 compati-
ble with PKZIP (Phil Katz's ZIP for MSDOS systems).
A companion program (unzip(1L)) unpacks zip archives. The
zip and unzip(1L) 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 pre-
vious 2 GB limit (4 GB in some cases). zip also now sup-
ports 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 PKUN-
ZIP 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
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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 stan-
dard 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 sup-
port data descriptors (but recent changes in the PKWare pub-
lished 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 gen-
erally 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 specify-
ing any parameters on the command line.
USE
The program is useful for packaging a set of files for dis-
tribution; 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 compres-
sion, 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 ...
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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 (match-
ing 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 con-
tains 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).
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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 pro-
gram. 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 exten-
sions). 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
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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 exten-
sion, the extension is added. If the name already contains
an extension other than 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 indi-
cate 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.
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Command modes. zip now supports two distinct types of com-
mand 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 synchron-
izes 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 EXAM-
PLES 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
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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 mul-
tiple 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 descrip-
tions 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 charac-
ter 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 plat-
forms that support wide characters, zip now stores, in addi-
tion 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
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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 exam-
ple, 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 com-
mand 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 any-
thing 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.
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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 preceeding 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 abbreviat-
ing 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.
OPTIONS
-a
--ascii
[Systems using EBCDIC] Translate file to ASCII format.
-A
--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.
-AC
--archive-clear
[WIN32] Once archive is created (and tested if -T is
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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 con-
sider using the -MM must match option. Be sure to
check out -DF as a possibly better way to do incremen-
tal backups.
-AS
--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 dif-
ferential archive.
-B
--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:
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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 use-
ful 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.
-c
--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.
-C
--preserve-case
[VMS] Preserve case all on VMS. Negating this option
(-C-) downcases.
-C2
--preserve-case-2
[VMS] Preserve case ODS2 on VMS. Negating this option
(-C2-) downcases.
-C5
--preserve-case-5
[VMS] Preserve case ODS5 on VMS. Negating this option
(-C5-) downcases.
-d
--delete
Remove (delete) entries from a zip archive. For exam-
ple:
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
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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 insensi-
tive, 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.
-db
--display-bytes
Display running byte counts showing the bytes zipped
and the bytes to go.
-dc
--display-counts
Display running count of entries zipped and entries to
go.
-dd
--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.
-df
--datafork
[MacOS] Include only data-fork of files zipped into the
archive. Good for exporting files to foreign
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operating-systems. Resource-forks will be ignored at
all.
-dg
--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 "Scan-
ning 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.
-du
--display-usize
Display the uncompressed size of each entry.
-dv
--display-volume
Display the volume (disk) number each entry is being
read from, if reading an existing archive, and being
written to.
-D
--no-dir-entries
Do not create entries in the zip archive for direc-
tories. 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
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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 @) ter-
minates the list.
-DF
--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.
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-e
--encrypt
Encrypt the contents of the zip archive using a pass-
word 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.
-E
--longnames
[OS/2] Use the .LONGNAME Extended Attribute (if found)
as filename.
-f
--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 com-
pare 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 day-
light savings time is in effect. Leave off the DDD if
there is no daylight savings time. For the US Eastern
time zone EST5EDT.
-F
--fix
-FF
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--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 incon-
sistent entries will be left out.
When doubled as in -FF, the archive is scanned from the
beginning and zip scans for special signatures to iden-
tify the limits between the archive members. The single
-F is more reliable if the archive is not too much dam-
aged, so try this option first.
If the archive is too damaged or the end has been trun-
cated, you must use -FF. This is a change from
zip 2.32, where the -F option is able to read a trun-
cated 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 exam-
ple, 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 incon-
sistent archive. Depending on what is damaged, you can
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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 rela-
tive 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.
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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.
-g
--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 cor-
rupted. This option is ignored when there's no existing
archive or when at least one archive member must be
updated or deleted.
-h
-?
--help
Display the zip help information (this also appears if
zip is run with no arguments).
-h2
--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 char-
acter. For other systems where the shell does not pro-
cess * do not use \ and the above is
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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
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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@include.lst
which will only include the files in the current direc-
tory 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.
-I
--no-image
[Acorn RISC OS] Don't scan through Image files. When
used, zip will not consider Image files (eg. DOS parti-
tions 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.
-ic
--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 com-
mand line pattern.
-j
--junk-paths
Store just the name of a saved file (junk the path),
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and do not store directory names. By default, zip will
store the full path (relative to the current direc-
tory).
-jj
--absolute-path
[MacOS] record Fullpath (+ Volname). The complete path
including volume will be stored. By default the rela-
tive path will be stored.
-J
--junk-sfx
Strip any prepended data (e.g. a SFX stub) from the
archive.
-k
--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.
-l
--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.
-la
--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.
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-li
--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.
-ll
--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.
-L
--license
Display the zip license.
-m
--move
Move the specified files into the zip archive; actu-
ally, 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.
-MM
--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 miss-
ing 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
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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% compres-
sion) 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
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files).
-nw
--no-wild
Do not perform internal wildcard processing (shell pro-
cessing 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.
-N
--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 com-
ments only for those files that do not have filenotes.
-o
--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.
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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.
-p
--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. Stor-
ing 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 pass-
words. (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.)
-q
--quiet
Quiet mode; eliminate informational messages and com-
ment prompts. (Useful, for example, in shell scripts
and background tasks).
-Qn
--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
-r
--recurse-paths
Travel the directory structure recursively; for exam-
ple:
zip -r foo.zip foo
or more concisely
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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 subdirec-
tories using them as it recurses.
-R
--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,
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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.
-RE
--regex
[WIN32] Before zip 3.0, regular expression list match-
ing 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 Win-
dows 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 exam-
ple, 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 multi-
plier. 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 direc-
tory with splits of 670 MB that might be useful for
burning on CDs, the command:
zip -s 670m -r foo bar
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could be used.
Currently the old splits of a split archive are not
excluded from a new archive, but they can be specifi-
cally 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.
-sb
--split-bell
If splitting and using split pause mode, ring the bell
when zip pauses for each split destination.
-sc
--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.
-sf
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--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.
-so
--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.
-sp
--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.
-su
--show-unicode
As -sf, but also show Unicode version of the path if
exists.
-sU
--show-just-unicode
As -sf, but only show Unicode version of the path if
exists, otherwise show the standard version of the
path.
-sv
--split-verbose
Enable various verbose messages while splitting,
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showing how the splitting is being done.
-S
--system-hidden
[MSDOS, OS/2, WIN32 and ATARI] Include system and hid-
den 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 speci-
fied 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.
-T
--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:
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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).
-u
--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.
-U
--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
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using copy mode. Use zipcloak for that.
-UN v
--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 stan-
dard 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 charac-
ters 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 char-
acter code. Setting -UN to
e - escape
as in
zip archive -sU -UN=e
forces zip to escape all characters that are not print-
able 7-bit ASCII.
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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 other-
wise. 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.
-v
--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 oddi-
ties.
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 ver-
sion, compilation date and the enabled optional
features used to create the zip executable).
-V
--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.
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-VV
--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.
-w
--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.
-ww
--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.
-ws
--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 boun-
daries as * does normally.
-x files
--exclude files
Explicitly exclude the specified files, as in:
zip -r foo foo -x \*.o
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which will include the contents of foo in foo.zip while
excluding all the files that end in The backslash
avoids the shell filename substitution, so that the
name matching is performed by zip at all directory lev-
els.
Also possible:
zip -r foo foo -x@exclude.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.
-X
--no-extra
Do not save extra file attributes (Extended Attributes
on OS/2, uid/gid and file times on Unix). The zip for-
mat uses extra fields to include additional information
for each entry. Some extra fields are specific to par-
ticular systems while others are applicable to all sys-
tems. 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 sys-
tem. 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.
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-y
--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.
-z
--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
-Z cm
--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 gen-
erally 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 compres-
sion 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
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-#
(-0, -1, -2, -3, -4, -5,
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 set-
ting will control compression speed for all compression
methods. Currently only deflation is controlled.
-!
--use-privileges
[WIN32] Use priviliges (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
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 substitu-
tion, files starting with "." are not included; to include
these as well:
zip stuff .* *
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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 correspond-
ing 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.
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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.
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 wild-
card matching allows a user to specify a list of char-
acters between square brackets and if any of the char-
acters match the expression matches. For example:
zip archive "*.[hc]"
would archive all files in the current directory that
end in
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
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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 spe-
cial 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.
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
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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
SEE ALSO
compress(1), shar(1L), tar(1), unzip(1L), gzip(1L)
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 success-
fully 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)
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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.
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 prop-
erly. 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
transfering 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 specif-
ications that use DECnet syntax foo::*.*.
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On OS/2, zip cannot match some names, such as those includ-
ing 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. How-
ever, 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.
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 Man-
drichenko, 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 UTIL-
ITIES 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 ver-
sion 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.
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
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the zip file format, compression format, and .ZIP filename
extension, and for accepting minor changes to the file for-
mat; 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 Peter-
sen, 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 possi-
ble. 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.
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