Unix zip command

Question

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Zipping folders and their contents into a .zip file in Linux

I need to zip a file on Unix machine. File is about 200MB. What is the best compression tool? and provide me the command to zip the file.

File structure:

- /home/testuser/myfolder/
                     |__  Myfile1.dat [200MB]
                     |__  MyFile2.dat [500MB]

Be aware that binary data files won't generally compress that well — Gareth, Dec 08 '10 at 11:02
Binary files may or may not compress well depending on how much repetition they contain, but they typically contain less repetition than a text file of similar size. The exception are already-compressed file formats, such as most media formats (.jpg, .mp3, .mpg, etc.), which, well, are already compressed. You should never see more than 1-2% reduction in file size for these formats and will often see them get *bigger* when zipped (but, again, by no more than 1-2%). — Dave Sherohman, Dec 08 '10 at 11:15
I'd suggest defining 'best'. Best compression? Best compatibility with 3rd party tools? Best compatibility with other OSes? — Rich Homolka, Dec 08 '10 at 15:40

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 08 '10 at 10:58

1

One program to zip files would be:

$ zip

To zip a directory:

$ zip -r archive.zip yourdirectory

Other popular ones are tar in conjuction with, e.g. Lempel-Ziv (gzip) or Burrows–Wheeler (bzip) style compression.

answered Dec 08 '10 at 10:58

miku

432
4
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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 08 '10 at 11:06

1

Basically the "best" compression is lzma. The order of available compressions is lzma, bzip2, gzip and finally compress. Whe you are saying Unix; what do you mean? If you happen to have GNU tar and friends you best option is lzma.

lzma:

tar --lzma -cvf stuff.tar.lzma file1.dat file2.dat

bzip2:

tar -cvjf stuff.tar.bzip2 file1.dat file2.dat

gzip:

tar -cvzf stuff.tar.gz file1.dat file2.dat

Of course if you don't have GNU tools:

compress:

tar -cvf stuff.tar file1.dat file2.dat
compress stuff.tar

answered Dec 08 '10 at 11:06

Sean Farrell

141
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OP asked for 'zip' – akira Dec 08 '10 at 12:51
Ok this might sound weird, but many people say zip and mean "to compress a file", thanks to WinZip. Same as when I say compress a file, I don't mean unix compress. As he was referring to the best way, I though he knew about the zip / unzip commands... – Sean Farrell Mar 20 '12 at 09:10

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 08 '10 at 11:06

As already mentioned, binary files do not compress well compared to plain text. I'd just gzip or bzip the file and be done with it. The time spent compressing it to the max with LZMA for example may eventually outweight the time for the extra few MB's of transfer, depending on your transfer medium.

eg.

tar czvf myfolder.tar.gz /home/testuser/myfolder

Unix zip command

3 Answers3