View list of files in ZIP archive on Linux

Question

How can I view the list of files in a ZIP archive without decompressing it?

Is it possible to do the same for a regular unix archive? (tar/gzip/bz2/ etc) — ThorSummoner, Oct 17 '14 at 16:59
tar tvf. if .gz, add a z. For bz2, add j. Lots more, check the man page. — UtahJarhead, Oct 19 '15 at 20:22

score 759 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 30 '10 at 11:33

759

The less utility is capable of peeking into a zip archive. In fact, if you look at the outputs of unzip -l zipfile and less zipfile, you will find them to be identical.

answered Nov 30 '10 at 11:33

ayaz

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Note, that ```less zipfile``` on MacOS-X displays the binary filecontent, so you see a lot of garbage instead of the content of the zip-file. Then you should opt for the ``ùnzip -l zipfile``` – heiglandreas Jan 25 '13 at 09:59
I get slightly more information from unzip compared to less. Just saying. – matt burns May 07 '13 at 10:57
23

@ayaz In what system does less list zipfiles? I see comments telling that it does not work on MAC, Ubuntu, and here I use Debian. Debian also shows binary garbage. – DrBeco Aug 12 '14 at 04:38
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In Ubuntu, try ```view [zipfile]```. – Samuel Lampa Sep 10 '14 at 16:07
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WRONG. unzip -l works well to show the files inside of a zip archive, but less gives out binary content in many cases and that's a mess of course. – Arturas M Nov 05 '14 at 13:48
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You need the ``lesspipe`` helper installed to enable zip file support for less. It's standard on many linux systems but not on OSX, but you can install it with brew. – pimlottc Jun 18 '15 at 19:37
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It's a neat hack to use `less`, but `unzip -l` seems like the canonical answer, esp. given that it's a far more universal answer. – Mark E. Haase Jun 29 '15 at 21:30
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`zipinfo myFile.zip` produces more info and particularly it lists UNIX file permissions whereas `unzip -l` is less verbose. My comment is based on zipinfo 3.0 and unzip 6.0 dated from April 2009. – Svilen Jan 27 '16 at 12:51
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FYI: `.jar` files (java archive) are zip files. – Christian Bongiorno Oct 11 '17 at 21:52
`view [zipfile]` also works in Debian 10 – Webwoman Dec 16 '19 at 15:38
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view [zipfile] works on macOS – gavin Jul 01 '20 at 14:44
Less is better where it works, cause you don't need to pipe it to the pager. – nethero May 28 '21 at 13:31
@Samuel Lampa's answer worked well for me. – Casivio Dec 21 '21 at 16:24

Ken Ratanachai S. · Answer 2 · 2022-05-18T15:14:29.967

194

Try unzip -l files.zip Or unzip -l files.zip | less if there are too many files to be listed in one page.

Also, See man unzip for more options

edited May 18 '22 at 15:14

answered Nov 30 '10 at 09:19

Ken Ratanachai S.

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You can skip the pipe to `less` command. It is great idea in a big collection of files, though. – omar Jul 09 '14 at 14:39
You can also add `-v` argument to include verbose details about compression for each file. – kevinarpe Mar 06 '22 at 14:26

score 128 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 25 '14 at 14:02

128

To list zip contents:

zipinfo -1 myzipfile.zip

For detailed output:

zipinfo myzipfile.zip

answered Sep 25 '14 at 14:02

kinORnirvana

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Nice answer, you don't have to parse the output just to get filenames. – Antoine Pelisse Oct 31 '14 at 23:04
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Is that supposed to be a `1` and not an `l`? – Mathias Lykkegaard Lorenzen Jan 03 '20 at 13:33
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@MathiasLykkegaardLorenzen according to `man zipinfo`: `-1 list filenames only, one per line. This option excludes all others; headers, trailers and zipfile comments are never printed. It is intended for use in Unix shell scripts.` – He Yifei 何一非 Jul 15 '20 at 23:16
The `-1` flag matches the `ls` command. `ls -1` prints all files, one line per file. – Nick Garvey Aug 19 '20 at 21:16

score 68 · Answer 4 · edited Dec 16 '13 at 20:09

68

Please use

vim ZIP_FILE_NAME

for the same. This is a simple and easy to remember one.

edited Dec 16 '13 at 20:09

Kevin Panko

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answered Dec 16 '13 at 19:42

Rajasekhar Tolety

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Nice, this also allows to open individual files in the archive without doing the unzip – user3885927 Sep 22 '16 at 17:25
Quite unexpected, and extremely handy! Thanks! – Pierre Feb 01 '19 at 16:46
Actually: this wont work if `unzip` is not installed on the system. Besides that, awesome! – sjas Mar 24 '19 at 22:04

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' · Answer 5 · 2014-08-12T09:17:03.573

You can make the zip appear as a directory (in which you use cd, ls, etc.) by mounting it with the fuse-zip virtual filesystem.

mkdir foo.d
fuse-zip foo.zip foo.d
ls foo.d
cat foo.d/README
...
fusermount -u foo.d
rmdir foo.d

Another relevant FUSE filesystem is AVFS. It creates a view of your entire directory hierarchy where all archives have an associated directory (same name with # tacked on at the end) that appears to hold the archive content.

mountavfs
ls ~/.avfs/$PWD/foo.zip\#
cat ~/.avfs/$PWD/foo.zip\#/README
...
umountavfs

Many modern file managers (e.g. Nautilus, Dolphin) show archive contents transparently.

AVFS is read-only. Fuse-zip is read-write, but beware that changes are only written to the zip file at unmount time, so don't start reading the archive expecting it to be modified until fusermount -u returns.

Nice, Giles. Thanks. Just a quick: can one add files to it by justing "cp"ing to the directory? — DrBeco, Aug 12 '14 at 04:45

score 15 · Answer 6 · answered Sep 10 '14 at 16:09

15

At least in Ubuntu, the possibly easiest command is:

view [zipfile]

This will open up the file listing in your standard text editor (nano, vim etc).

answered Sep 10 '14 at 16:09

Samuel Lampa

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works on macOS too – gavin Jul 01 '20 at 14:45

ePi272314 · Answer 7 · 2019-07-19T16:31:50.483

A more comprehensive solution: vim || emacs

The previous answer by @kinORnirvana is my favorite to produce a file with the content of a zip archive.

zipinfo [-1] archive.zip > archive_content.txt

However, I recommend vim or emacs (not nano) if you need to browse into an archive file or even to view the content of a file contained inside it.

vim archive.zip

This approach works with other archive formats too:

vim file.tar
vim file.tar.gz
vim file.tar.bz2

With vim or emacs you can:

browse the directory structure of the archive file.
view the content of any file inside the archive file.

score 2 · Answer 8 · answered Apr 21 '17 at 23:41

2

If you're more graphically oriented, Midnight Commander can also browse zip files as if they were regular directories.

answered Apr 21 '17 at 23:41

Charles Burge

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score 2 · Answer 9 · edited Jul 09 '14 at 14:56

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Its actually unzip -l file.zip | grep "search" or if you have a lot of files

for i in `ls *zip`; do 
  unzip -l $i | grep "search"; 
done

Update: Changed from '-p' to '-l' in order to search for files.

edited Jul 09 '14 at 14:56

omar

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answered Aug 17 '13 at 00:51

Rob

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score 1 · Answer 10 · answered Aug 12 '14 at 04:41

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(yaa) Yet another answer:

Alias this command:

alias vless='/usr/share/vim/vim73/macros/less.sh'

and you can use vless file.zip to take advantage of vi (or vim) less script.

(also good to substitute less, so you can have colors)

answered Aug 12 '14 at 04:41

DrBeco

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`less -R` *do* support ANSI colors. – Sylvain Leroux Nov 18 '16 at 14:19

score 0 · Answer 11 · answered May 23 '22 at 14:22

0

it is possible to peek inside also with zmore, zless, zcat, but with vim is in a structured way

answered May 23 '22 at 14:22

Petronella

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score -1 · Answer 12 · answered Feb 10 '20 at 15:22

-1

Try this -

zipdetails yourFileName.zip

answered Feb 10 '20 at 15:22

URL87

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Could you possibly include some example outputs? Is zipdetails part of the standard Linux kernel or would the OP need to install this separately? – Burgi Feb 10 '20 at 15:46
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Wouldn't it be better to use `zipdetails yourFileName.zip | grep "Filename "`? – zx485 Feb 10 '20 at 23:24
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`Zipdetails displays information about the internal record structure of zip files. It is not concerned with displaying any details of the compressed data stored in the zip file.` zipinfo seems much more appropriate here – xeruf Oct 15 '21 at 10:27
@zx485 Using Redhat 7, I'm unable to use any commands in other answers, and we're unable to request to install anything on that server. Your solution was useful, thanks! – Metafaniel Aug 03 '22 at 00:09

View list of files in ZIP archive on Linux

12 Answers12

A more comprehensive solution: vim || emacs

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