Software & Apps Linux Example Uses of the Linux Command 'unzip' The 'unzip' command varies through the use of command switches by Juergen Haas Writer Former Lifewire writer Juergen Haas is a software developer, data scientist, and a fan of the Linux operating system. our editorial process Juergen Haas Updated on July 22, 2020 Tweet Share Email Linux Switching from Windows The following examples illustrate typical uses of the command unzip for unpackaging archive files. The archive files are assumed to be generated using software such as zip, which uses the standard zip-file format. Kelly Sillaste / Getty Images Sample Uses To use unzip to extract all members of the archive letters.zip into the current directory and subdirectories below it, creating any subdirectories as necessary: unzip letters To extract all members of letters.zip into the current directory only: unzip -j letters To test letters.zip, printing only a summary message indicating whether the archive is OK or not: unzip -tq letters To test all zipfiles in the current directory, printing only the summaries: unzip -tq \*.zip The backslash before the asterisk is only required if the shell expands wildcards, as in Unix; double quotes could have been used instead, as in the source examples below. To extract to standard output all members of letters.zip whose names end in .tex, auto-converting to the local end-of-line convention and piping the output into more: unzip -ca letters \*.tex | more To extract the binary file paper1.dvi to standard output and pipe it to a printing program: unzip -p articles paper1.dvi | dvips To extract all FORTRAN and C source files--*.f, *.c, *.h, and Makefile--into the /tmp directory: unzip source.zip "*.[fch]" Makefile -d /tmp To extract all FORTRAN and C source files, regardless of case (e.g., both *.c and *.C, and any makefile, Makefile, MAKEFILE or similar): unzip -C source.zip "*.[fch]" makefile -d /tmp To extract any such files but convert any uppercase MS-DOS or VMS names to lowercase and convert the line-endings of all of the files to the local standard (without respect to any files that might be marked ``binary''): unzip -aaCL source.zip "*.[fch]" makefile -d /tmp To extract only newer versions of the files already in the current directory, without querying: unzip -fo sources To extract newer versions of the files already in the current directory and to create any files not already there: unzip -uo sources To display a diagnostic screen showing which unzip and zipinfo options are stored in environment variables, whether decryption support was compiled in, the compiler with which unzip was compiled, etc.: unzip -v In the last five examples, assume that UNZIP or UNZIP_OPTS is set to -q. To do a singly quiet listing: unzip -l file.zip To do a doubly quiet listing: unzip -ql file.zip Was this page helpful? Thanks for letting us know! Get the Latest Tech News Delivered Every Day Email Address Sign up There was an error. Please try again. You're in! Thanks for signing up. There was an error. Please try again. Thank you for signing up. Tell us why! Other Not enough details Hard to understand Submit