Compress files from OS X terminal?
Solution 1
It's called zip
.
This adds the file file
to the archive file.zip
:
zip file.zip file
Of course, to add more files, just add them as arguments to the command. Check out man zip
for more options.
Often, you'll want to skip including those pesky .DS_Store
files, for example compressing the whole folder folder
into folder.zip
:
zip -vr folder.zip folder/ -x "*.DS_Store"
Solution 2
To compress the files exactly as the Finder command would compress them, use:
ditto -c -k --sequesterRsrc --keepParent src_directory archive.zip
See man ditto
for details:
The command: ditto -c -k --sequesterRsrc --keepParent src_directory archive.zip will create a PKZip archive similarly to the Finder's Compress function- ality.
Solution 3
with considering the above answers,
If you want to compress a directory or folder with the zip
command:
zip -r directory.zip directory
Explanation:
zip
command for zipping
directory.zip
is the destination file that will be created after running the zip command.
direcotry
source folder which you want to be compressed.
-r
flag will recursively iterate in folders and subfolders.
Solution 4
There is tar(1) and gzip (or bzip2 or lzma). Tar is used to roll a number of files into one archive, while the one of the other three is used to compress it.
On a command line, you will call tar with a couple of options to create an archive and gzip it.
E.g.:
tar -c -z -f myarchive.tar.gz -C /home/username Downloads
This willl -c reate a g -z ipped archive named -f ile from the -C hange-folder-to directory and will contain all files in the folder Downloads. The -C option is optional and the source-file arguments will be taken from the current folder if omitted.
For reference: tar tutorial
William Jockusch
Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
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William Jockusch over 1 year
In the Finder, there is this wonderful ability to right click on a file or directory, select compress from the drop-down, and end up with a zipped file.
Is it possible to do the same thing from the terminal?
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slhck almost 10 years@JacobRaccuia See superuser.com/questions/297702/…
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Henry Blyth almost 7 yearsThis is the best answer because it produces an identical zip, whereas CLI zip or tar is different and slightly smaller. A similar question with the same answer: stackoverflow.com/questions/10738505/…
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mwfearnley over 6 yearsIs it the plain old GNU zip that comes with OS X?
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slhck over 6 years@mwfearnley Under macOS, it's
Copyright (c) 1990-2008 Info-ZIP
. developer.apple.com/legacy/library/documentation/Darwin/… -
commonpike about 5 yearslink to manpage broke .. just use
man zip
on the command line -
Victor VosMottor about 4 yearsI got an empty zip file :(
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slhck about 4 years@VictorVosMottorthanksMonica Please ask a new question about this and include as much info as possible.
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ivanzolotov about 4 years@VictorVosMottorthanksMonica, add -r when you compress folders.
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ivanzolotov about 4 yearsYou can use -X to exclude all annoying Mac OS hidden files, not only DS_Store.
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Võ Quang Hòa about 3 yearsThanks. This is what I am looking for
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Artur Müller Romanov over 2 yearsThis should be the correct answer