Archive and Compress Files Using zipzipzip both archives and compresses files, thus making it great for sending multiple files as email attachments, backing up items, or for saving disk space. Using it is simple. Let's say you want to send a TIFF to someone via email. A TIFF image is uncompressed, so it tends to be pretty large. Zipping it up should help make the email attachment a bit smaller. Note When using ls -l, I'm only showing the information needed for each example. $ ls -lh -rw-r--r-- scott scott 1006K young_edgar_scott.tif $ zip grandpa.zip young_edgar_scott.tif adding: young_edgar_scott.tif (deflated 19%) $ ls -lh -rw-r--r-- scott scott 1006K young_edgar_scott.tif -rw-r--r-- scott scott 819K grandpa.zip grandpa.zip In this case, you shaved off about 200KB on the resulting zip file, or 19%, as zip helpfully informs you. Not bad. You can do the same thing for several images. $ ls -l -rw-r--r-- scott scott 251980 edgar_intl_shoe.tif -rw-r--r-- scott scott 1130922 edgar_baby.tif -rw-r--r-- scott scott 1029224 young_edgar_scott.tif $ zip grandpa.zip edgar_intl_shoe.tif edgar_ baby.tif young_edgar_scott.tif adding: edgar_intl_shoe.tif (deflated 4%) adding: edgar_baby.tif (deflated 12%) adding: young_edgar_scott.tif (deflated 19%) $ ls -l -rw-r--r-- scott scott 251980 edgar_intl_shoe.tif -rw-r--r-- scott scott 1130922 edgar_baby.tif -rw-r--r-- scott scott 2074296 grandpa.zip -rw-r--r-- scott scott 1029224 young_edgar_scott.tif It's not too polite, however, to zip up individual files this way. For three files, it's not so bad. The recipient will unzip grandpa.zip and end up with three individual files. If the payload was 50 files, however, the user would end up with files strewn everywhere. Better to zip up a directory containing those 50 files so when the user unzips it, he's left with a tidy directory instead. $ ls -lF drwxr-xr-x scott scott edgar_scott/ $ zip grandpa.zip edgar_scott adding: edgar_scott/ (stored 0%) adding: edgar_scott/edgar_baby.tif (deflated 12%) adding: edgar_scott/young_edgar_scott.tif (deflated 19%) adding: edgar_scott/edgar_intl_shoe.tif (deflated 4%) $ ls -lF drwxr-xr-x scott scott 160 edgar_scott/ -rw-r--r-- scott scott 2074502 grandpa.zip Whether you're zipping up a file, several files, or a directory, the pattern is the same: the zip command, followed by the name of the Zip file you're creating, and finished with the item(s) you're adding to the Zip file. |