Compress and Decompress Files and Directories (Linux)

Compress

How Compress directories

Unlike zip, gzip functions as a compression algorithm only.

Because of various reasons some of which hearken back to the era of tape drives, Unix uses a program named tar to archive data, which can then be compressed with a compression program like gzip, bzip2, 7zip, etc.

In order to "zip" a directory, the correct command would be:

tar -zcvf archive.tar.gz directory/ 

This will tell tar to c (create) an archive from the files in directory (tar is recursive by default), compress it using the z (gzip) algorithm, store the output as a f (file) named archive.tar.gz, and v(verbosely) list (on /dev/stderr so it doesn't affect piped commands) all the files it adds to the archive.

The tar command offers gzip support (via the -z flag) purely for your convenience. The gzipcommand/lib is completely separate.

The command above is effectively the same as:

tar -cv directory | gzip > archive.tar.gz 

To decompress and unpack the archive into the current directory you would use:

tar -zxvf archive.tar.gz

That command is effectively the same as:

gunzip < archive.tar.gz | tar -xv

tar has many, many, MANY other options and uses as well; I heartily recommend reading through its manpage sometime.

tar -zcvf archive-name.tar.gz directory-name

Decompress

tar

tar xfv foo.tar.gz
tar -xjf foo.tar.bz2
tar -xvJf foo.tar.xy
tar -xvJf foo.tar.xz

bzip

bunzip2 foo.tar.bz2

zip

unzip foo.zip

gunzip

gunzip foo.log.1.gz           # Decompress file and delete gz file
gunzip -k foo.log.1.gz        # Decompress file and preserve gz file
gunzip -N foo.log.1.gz        # Decompress file and preserve original timestamps and delete gz file