How to compress/decompress files in Linux.
Zip files
To compress of decompress zip files you must have the following programs installed in your computer
zip to compress files
unzip to decompress files
here are the commands
to zip a single file
$zip archive_name.zip file_name
to zip a single folder use the folder name instead of file_name
$zip -r archive_name.zip folder_name
to zip multiple files use
$zip archive_name.zip file1 file2 file3 file4 file5
you can also zip a combination of files and folders into one zip file like this
$zip -r archive_name.zip file1 file3 file4 folder_name1/ folder2/ folder3/
to unzip a file u need unzip program installed in your system
$unzip file.zip
to view data in the zip file use
$unzip -v file.zip
Rar files
You need the rar program from rarlabs.com to compress/decompress these files or you can use unrar or unrar-nonfree packages
$rar -a file.rar /folder/
to uncompress use
$rar -x file.rar
to view the data in the file use
$rar -v file.rar
Tar Files
to compress files into a tar archive use
$tar cvf file.tar folder/ *
to unpack or to uncompress us
$tar -xvf file.tar
to view data in the tar file use
$tar -tvf file
Here the ‘v’ is optional, it just gives verbose output
Tar.gz files
to compress into .tar.gz use
$tar czvf file.tar.gz folder
to uncompress use
$tar xzvf file.tar.gz
to view data in the tar.gz file use
tar tzvf file.tar.gz
bz2 files
to compress into bz2 format use bzip2
$bzip2 file
above command will create an archive named file.bz2. Also bz2 works on only files.
So if you want to compress a folder you have to pack it into a tar file first and use bzip2 on it.
to uncompress or unpack use
$bzip2 -d file.bz2
tar.bz2 files
to compress into a tar.bz2 file use
$tar cjvf file.tar.bz2 folder
to uncompress tar.bz2 files use
$tar -xjvf file.tar.bz2
to view data in the file use
$tar -tjvf file.tar.bz2