Compress and decompress - use the zip utility to handle .zip files. With zip and unzip commands.

Standard on macOS and Linux.

Manpage

man zip

The program is useful for packaging a set of files for distribution; for archiving files; and for saving disk space by temporarily compressing unused files or directories.

Online

Compress

The zip command will replace any existing .zip file, but it will add target input files to it and keep the existing files in the zip file. Check the flags to change how this works.

The target can be one or more files or directories.

zip ZIPPED_FILE INFILES

e.g.

zip -r foo.zip foo/
# Equivalent without .zip explicitly.
zip -r foo foo/

zip foo.zip a.txt b.py

zip bar.zip *.doc

Common flags:

Flag Description
-r Add all files in a folder and its subfolders to the archive.
-e Prompt for a password to encrypt the files.
-d Remove a file from a zip archive.
-u Update an existing archive (adds new files or replaces changed ones).
-l Translate line endings (LF to CRLF) for text files.
-q Quite mode.
-j Junk paths (store files without their directory structure).

Decompress

unzip ZIPPED_FILE [OUTPUT]

e.g.

unzip foo.zip
# => foo/

unzip foo.zip baz.doc

Compress with encryption

zip -r -e data.zip data/