Download a zipped file linux

With an efficient zipping utility in tow, you can share multiple files and folders efficiently by combining them into one single file. In Linux, zipping a folder saves a lot of space and network bandwidth.

Since its development in , ZIP has become one of the preferred ways to compress data and reduce the file size. Using some native commands like zip , you too can zip a folder on Linux-based systems with ease. Most of the time, you won't find the zip utility installed on your Linux system by default. To install zip, you can use your distribution's default package manager.

As soon as the zip command is invoked, the utility starts scanning the files specified in the input. In case the scan takes more than five seconds, the zip command will display the message: Scanning files. If the output displays progress dots at an interval of every two seconds, it means the files are being processed. If the time lapsed is more than two seconds, it means either the command is taking time to locate the files or the network connection is slow.

In case zip is not able to locate a specific file, it will issue a warning, but still, continue to process your request. Finally, in case some files are skipped during the process, the command will issue a warning at the end, telling you how many files it processed and how many it skipped. GZ Files. To do so, run this command:.

After running the aforementioned command, use the Is command to confirm the creation of the archive. If the zip command determines the file size is too big, it will store the file as it is within the archive, without compressing it. Additionally, you can specify the compression levels by using numbers ranging from zero to nine.

The default value is -6 ; however, use -0 to store files without compression. On the other hand, -9 will force the zip command to use an optimal compression for all the files within the archive. To zip a folder with an unknown path, you can use the find command effectively. Firstly pipe find to the exec command so that you can execute the zip command for the creation of an archive.

Using this option is quite helpful as you get the flexibility for choosing archive folders recursively. You can also choose to have a certain level of folders zipped into your archive. Mostly every desktop environment within Linux includes a way to zip files. Here filename refers to the name that you want to address the file as. Using this, we can also change the type of the file. This is shown in the image below:.

Wget also allows users to recursively download their files which is basically downloading all the files from the website under a single directory. For more information regarding Wget, users can input the following command into the terminal to get access to all the Wget commands that appear to be available:. Curl is another command line tool that can be used to download files from the internet. Unlike Wget, which is command line only, features of Curl are powered by libcurl which is a cross-platform URL transfer library.

Curl not only allows downloading of files but can also be used for uploading and exchanging of requests with servers. However, Curl does not support recursive downloads which Wget offers.

Similarly, like Wget, Curl comes pre-installed with most of the Linux Distributions. This can simply be checked by running the following command:. Just like Wget, Curl has multiple features incorporated inside of it. The most basic is its ability to allow users to download files from a single URL from the internet. For better understanding, we will be downloading a simple image in the png format from the internet just like in the case of Wget. Curl also allows users to change the filename and the type of the file.

This can be done by the following command:. In the image above, we took a png file originally named pancake1. Just like in the case of Wget, Curl allows users to download multiple files using a number of URLs from the internet.

For our example, we will use curl to download a jpg file and a png file from the internet. Results are shown in the image below:. A pretty amazing feature that Curl provides to its users is its ability to monitor the progress of the download of the file. For more information regarding Curl, users can input the following command into the terminal to get access to all the Curl commands that appear to be available:.

Wget and Curl are among the wide range of command line tools that Linux offers for the downloading of files. Both offer a huge set of features that cater to different needs of the users. If users simply want to download files recursively, then Wget would be a good choice. Hi there! You can reach out to me on LinkedIn.