ZIP Compression: Creating and Opening ZIP Files in UNIX

The ZIP compression format is a popular way to reduce file sizes for download and storage, especially on Windows PCs. WinZip, pkzip and pkunzip are compression packages for use on PCs, and Windows XP will create and open ZIP files with no additional software. Similar packages are gunzip and gzip which are for use on UNIX machines. There are two other programs that work similar to the PC versions. They are called zip and unzip, but currently they are not supported by ECN. You may find them in /usr/unsup/bin/. The programs gunzip and gzip are not directly compatible with the PC pkzip program.

The only supported way to get the information onto a UNIX account here at ECN is to pkunzip the files on a PC and transfer the files to a UNIX machine.

Using zip and unzip is possible but note that the flags are slightly different from the flags for pkzip and pkunzip. Currently there is no online documentation so use the -h flag when using these two programs.