Unzip Linux - Shell/Bash

If you're a programmer working with Linux, chances are you need to extract zip files on a regular basis. The command line tool for this task is unzip, and in this tutorial, we'll cover everything you need to know to get started with it.

Installation

Most Linux distributions already have unzip installed by default, but if you don't have it, you can install it with the following commands:

Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install unzip

Red Hat/Fedora:

sudo yum install unzip

Basic Usage

The basic syntax for unzip is:

unzip [options] file.zip

For example, to extract a zip file called archive.zip, you would run:

unzip archive.zip

By default, unzip will extract the contents of the zip file to the current directory.

Extracting to a Different Directory

If you want to extract the contents of a zip file to a different directory, you can use the -d option followed by the desired path:

unzip archive.zip -d /path/to/directory

Listing Contents

If you want to see a list of the files contained in a zip file without extracting them, you can use the -l option:

unzip -l archive.zip

Extracting Specific Files

If you only want to extract specific files from a zip file, you can specify their names after the zip file name:

unzip archive.zip file1.txt file2.txt

Extracting with a Password

If the zip file is password-protected, you can provide the password with the -P option:

unzip -P password archive.zip

Conclusion

unzip is a powerful and versatile tool for extracting zip files from the command line. With the options covered in this tutorial, you should be able to handle most zip file extraction tasks on Linux.