ZIPINFO(1L) ZIPINFO(1L)
NAME
zipinfo - list detailed information about a ZIP archive
SYNOPSIS
zipinfo [-12CsmlvhMtTz] file[.zip] [file(s) ...] [-x xfile(s) ...]
unzip -Z [-12CsmlvhMtTz] file[.zip] [file(s) ...] [-x xfile(s) ...]
DESCRIPTION
zipinfo lists technical information about files in a ZIP archive, most commonly found on MS-DOS systems. Such
information includes file access permissions, encryption status, type of compression, version and operating
system or file system of compressing program, and the like. The default behavior (with no options) is to list
single-line entries for each file in the archive, with header and trailer lines providing summary information
for the entire archive. The format is a cross between Unix ``ls -l'' and ``unzip -v'' output. See DETAILED
DESCRIPTION below. Note that zipinfo is the same program as unzip (under Unix, a link to it); on some sys‐
tems, however, zipinfo support may have been omitted when unzip was compiled.
ARGUMENTS
file[.zip]
Path of the ZIP archive(s). If the file specification is a wildcard, each matching file is processed
in an order determined by the operating system (or file system). Only the filename can be a wildcard;
the path itself cannot. Wildcard expressions are similar to Unix egrep(1) (regular) expressions and
may contain:
* matches a sequence of 0 or more characters
? matches exactly 1 character
[...] matches any single character found inside the brackets; ranges are specified by a beginning
character, a hyphen, and an ending character. If an exclamation point or a caret (`!' or `^')
follows the left bracket, then the range of characters within the brackets is complemented (that
is, anything except the characters inside the brackets is considered a match). To specify a
verbatim left bracket, the three-character sequence ``[[]'' has to be used.
(Be sure to quote any character that might otherwise be interpreted or modified by the operating sys‐
tem, particularly under Unix and VMS.) If no matches are found, the specification is assumed to be a
literal filename; and if that also fails, the suffix .zip is appended. Note that self-extracting ZIP
files are supported, as with any other ZIP archive; just specify the .exe suffix (if any) explicitly.
[file(s)]
An optional list of archive members to be processed, separated by spaces. (VMS versions compiled with
VMSCLI defined must delimit files with commas instead.) Regular expressions (wildcards) may be used to
match multiple members; see above. Again, be sure to quote expressions that would otherwise be
expanded or modified by the operating system.
[-x xfile(s)]
An optional list of archive members to be excluded from processing.
OPTIONS
-1 list filenames only, one per line. This option excludes all others; headers, trailers and zipfile com‐
ments are never printed. It is intended for use in Unix shell scripts.
-2 list filenames only, one per line, but allow headers (-h), trailers (-t) and zipfile comments (-z), as
well. This option may be useful in cases where the stored filenames are particularly long.
-C use case-insensitive matching for the selection of archive entries from the command-line list of
-h list header line. The archive name, actual size (in bytes) and total number of files is printed.
-M pipe all output through an internal pager similar to the Unix more(1) command. At the end of a screen‐
ful of output, zipinfo pauses with a ``--More--'' prompt; the next screenful may be viewed by pressing
the Enter (Return) key or the space bar. zipinfo can be terminated by pressing the ``q'' key and, on
some systems, the Enter/Return key. Unlike Unix more(1), there is no forward-searching or editing
capability. Also, zipinfo doesn't notice if long lines wrap at the edge of the screen, effectively
resulting in the printing of two or more lines and the likelihood that some text will scroll off the
top of the screen before being viewed. On some systems the number of available lines on the screen is
not detected, in which case zipinfo assumes the height is 24 lines.
-t list totals for files listed or for all files. The number of files listed, their uncompressed and com‐
pressed total sizes , and their overall compression factor is printed; or, if only the totals line is
being printed, the values for the entire archive are given. The compressed total size does not include
the 12 additional header bytes of each encrypted entry. Note that the total compressed (data) size will
never match the actual zipfile size, since the latter includes all of the internal zipfile headers in
addition to the compressed data.
-T print the file dates and times in a sortable decimal format (yymmdd.hhmmss). The default date format
is a more standard, human-readable version with abbreviated month names (see examples below).
-U [UNICODE_SUPPORT only] modify or disable UTF-8 handling. When UNICODE_SUPPORT is available, the option
-U forces unzip to escape all non-ASCII characters from UTF-8 coded filenames as ``#Uxxxx''. This
option is mainly provided for debugging purpose when the fairly new UTF-8 support is suspected to man‐
gle up extracted filenames.
The option -UU allows to entirely disable the recognition of UTF-8 encoded filenames. The handling of
filename codings within unzip falls back to the behaviour of previous versions.
-z include the archive comment (if any) in the listing.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
zipinfo has a number of modes, and its behavior can be rather difficult to fathom if one isn't familiar with
Unix ls(1) (or even if one is). The default behavior is to list files in the following format:
-rw-rws--- 1.9 unx 2802 t- defX 11-Aug-91 13:48 perms.2660
The last three fields are the modification date and time of the file, and its name. The case of the filename
is respected; thus files that come from MS-DOS PKZIP are always capitalized. If the file was zipped with a
stored directory name, that is also displayed as part of the filename.
The second and third fields indicate that the file was zipped under Unix with version 1.9 of zip. Since it
comes from Unix, the file permissions at the beginning of the line are printed in Unix format. The uncom‐
pressed file-size (2802 in this example) is the fourth field.
The fifth field consists of two characters, either of which may take on several values. The first character
may be either `t' or `b', indicating that zip believes the file to be text or binary, respectively; but if the
file is encrypted, zipinfo notes this fact by capitalizing the character (`T' or `B'). The second character
may also take on four values, depending on whether there is an extended local header and/or an ``extra field''
associated with the file (fully explained in PKWare's APPNOTE.TXT, but basically analogous to pragmas in ANSI
C--i.e., they provide a standard way to include non-standard information in the archive). If neither exists,
the character will be a hyphen (`-'); if there is an extended local header but no extra field, `l'; if the
reverse, `x'; and if both exist, `X'. Thus the file in this example is (probably) a text file, is not
encrypted, and has neither an extra field nor an extended local header associated with it. The example below,
--w------- 1.0 mac 17357 bx i8:2 4-May-92 04:02 unzip.macr
File attributes in the first two cases are indicated in a Unix-like format, where the seven subfields indicate
whether the file: (1) is a directory, (2) is readable (always true), (3) is writable, (4) is executable
(guessed on the basis of the extension--.exe, .com, .bat, .cmd and .btm files are assumed to be so), (5) has
its archive bit set, (6) is hidden, and (7) is a system file. Interpretation of Macintosh file attributes is
unreliable because some Macintosh archivers don't store any attributes in the archive.
Finally, the sixth field indicates the compression method and possible sub-method used. There are six methods
known at present: storing (no compression), reducing, shrinking, imploding, tokenizing (never publicly
released), and deflating. In addition, there are four levels of reducing (1 through 4); four types of implod‐
ing (4K or 8K sliding dictionary, and 2 or 3 Shannon-Fano trees); and four levels of deflating (superfast,
fast, normal, maximum compression). zipinfo represents these methods and their sub-methods as follows: stor;
re:1, re:2, etc.; shrk; i4:2, i8:3, etc.; tokn; and defS, defF, defN, and defX.
The medium and long listings are almost identical to the short format except that they add information on the
file's compression. The medium format lists the file's compression factor as a percentage indicating the
amount of space that has been ``removed'':
-rw-rws--- 1.5 unx 2802 t- 81% defX 11-Aug-91 13:48 perms.2660
In this example, the file has been compressed by more than a factor of five; the compressed data are only 19%
of the original size. The long format gives the compressed file's size in bytes, instead:
-rw-rws--- 1.5 unx 2802 t- 538 defX 11-Aug-91 13:48 perms.2660
In contrast to the unzip listings, the compressed size figures in this listing format denote the complete size
of compressed data, including the 12 extra header bytes in case of encrypted entries.
Adding the -T option changes the file date and time to decimal format:
-rw-rws--- 1.5 unx 2802 t- 538 defX 910811.134804 perms.2660
Note that because of limitations in the MS-DOS format used to store file times, the seconds field is always
rounded to the nearest even second. For Unix files this is expected to change in the next major releases of
zip(1L) and unzip.
In addition to individual file information, a default zipfile listing also includes header and trailer lines:
Archive: OS2.zip 5453 bytes 5 files
,,rw, 1.0 hpf 730 b- i4:3 26-Jun-92 23:40 Contents
,,rw, 1.0 hpf 3710 b- i4:3 26-Jun-92 23:33 makefile.os2
,,rw, 1.0 hpf 8753 b- i8:3 26-Jun-92 15:29 os2unzip.c
,,rw, 1.0 hpf 98 b- stor 21-Aug-91 15:34 unzip.def
,,rw, 1.0 hpf 95 b- stor 21-Aug-91 17:51 zipinfo.def
5 files, 13386 bytes uncompressed, 4951 bytes compressed: 63.0%
The header line gives the name of the archive, its total size, and the total number of files; the trailer
gives the number of files listed, their total uncompressed size, and their total compressed size (not includ‐
ing any of zip's internal overhead). If, however, one or more file(s) are provided, the header and trailer
lines are not listed. This behavior is also similar to that of Unix's ``ls -l''; it may be overridden by
specifying the -h and -t options explicitly. In such a case the listing format must also be specified explic‐
itly, since -h or -t (or both) in the absence of other options implies that ONLY the header or trailer line
(or both) is listed. See the EXAMPLES section below for a semi-intelligible translation of this nonsense.
ENVIRONMENT OPTIONS
Modifying zipinfo's default behavior via options placed in an environment variable can be a bit complicated to
explain, due to zipinfo's attempts to handle various defaults in an intuitive, yet Unix-like, manner. (Try
not to laugh.) Nevertheless, there is some underlying logic. In brief, there are three ``priority levels''
of options: the default options; environment options, which can override or add to the defaults; and explicit
options given by the user, which can override or add to either of the above.
The default listing format, as noted above, corresponds roughly to the "zipinfo -hst" command (except when
individual zipfile members are specified). A user who prefers the long-listing format (-l) can make use of
the zipinfo's environment variable to change this default:
Unix Bourne shell:
ZIPINFO=-l; export ZIPINFO
Unix C shell:
setenv ZIPINFO -l
OS/2 or MS-DOS:
set ZIPINFO=-l
VMS (quotes for lowercase):
define ZIPINFO_OPTS "-l"
If, in addition, the user dislikes the trailer line, zipinfo's concept of ``negative options'' may be used to
override the default inclusion of the line. This is accomplished by preceding the undesired option with one
or more minuses: e.g., ``-l-t'' or ``--tl'', in this example. The first hyphen is the regular switch charac‐
ter, but the one before the `t' is a minus sign. The dual use of hyphens may seem a little awkward, but it's
reasonably intuitive nonetheless: simply ignore the first hyphen and go from there. It is also consistent
with the behavior of the Unix command nice(1).
As suggested above, the default variable names are ZIPINFO_OPTS for VMS (where the symbol used to install zip‐
info as a foreign command would otherwise be confused with the environment variable), and ZIPINFO for all
other operating systems. For compatibility with zip(1L), ZIPINFOOPT is also accepted (don't ask). If both
ZIPINFO and ZIPINFOOPT are defined, however, ZIPINFO takes precedence. unzip's diagnostic option (-v with no
zipfile name) can be used to check the values of all four possible unzip and zipinfo environment variables.
EXAMPLES
To get a basic, short-format listing of the complete contents of a ZIP archive storage.zip, with both header
and totals lines, use only the archive name as an argument to zipinfo:
zipinfo storage
To produce a basic, long-format listing (not verbose), including header and totals lines, use -l:
zipinfo -l storage
To list the complete contents of the archive without header and totals lines, either negate the -h and -t
options or else specify the contents explicitly:
zipinfo --h-t storage
zipinfo storage \*
(where the backslash is required only if the shell would otherwise expand the `*' wildcard, as in Unix when
zipinfo -st storage [full listing]
The -s option, like -m and -l, includes headers and footers by default, unless otherwise specified. Since the
environment variable specified no footers and that has a higher precedence than the default behavior of -s, an
explicit -t option was necessary to produce the full listing. Nothing was indicated about the header, how‐
ever, so the -s option was sufficient. Note that both the -h and -t options, when used by themselves or with
each other, override any default listing of member files; only the header and/or footer are printed. This
behavior is useful when zipinfo is used with a wildcard zipfile specification; the contents of all zipfiles
are then summarized with a single command.
To list information on a single file within the archive, in medium format, specify the filename explicitly:
zipinfo -m storage unshrink.c
The specification of any member file, as in this example, will override the default header and totals lines;
only the single line of information about the requested file will be printed. This is intuitively what one
would expect when requesting information about a single file. For multiple files, it is often useful to know
the total compressed and uncompressed size; in such cases -t may be specified explicitly:
zipinfo -mt storage "*.[ch]" Mak\*
To get maximal information about the ZIP archive, use the verbose option. It is usually wise to pipe the out‐
put into a filter such as Unix more(1) if the operating system allows it:
zipinfo -v storage | more
Finally, to see the most recently modified files in the archive, use the -T option in conjunction with an
external sorting utility such as Unix sort(1) (and sed(1) as well, in this example):
zipinfo -T storage | sort -nr -k 7 | sed 15q
The -nr option to sort(1) tells it to sort numerically in reverse order rather than in textual order, and the
-k 7 option tells it to sort on the seventh field. This assumes the default short-listing format; if -m or -l
is used, the proper sort(1) option would be -k 8. Older versions of sort(1) do not support the -k option, but
you can use the traditional + option instead, e.g., +6 instead of -k 7. The sed(1) command filters out all
but the first 15 lines of the listing. Future releases of zipinfo may incorporate date/time and filename
sorting as built-in options.
TIPS
The author finds it convenient to define an alias ii for zipinfo on systems that allow aliases (or, on other
systems, copy/rename the executable, create a link or create a command file with the name ii). The ii usage
parallels the common ll alias for long listings in Unix, and the similarity between the outputs of the two
commands was intentional.
BUGS
As with unzip, zipinfo's -M (``more'') option is overly simplistic in its handling of screen output; as noted
above, it fails to detect the wrapping of long lines and may thereby cause lines at the top of the screen to
be scrolled off before being read. zipinfo should detect and treat each occurrence of line-wrap as one addi‐
tional line printed. This requires knowledge of the screen's width as well as its height. In addition, zip‐
info should detect the true screen geometry on all systems.
zipinfo's listing-format behavior is unnecessarily complex and should be simplified. (This is not to say that
it will be.)
Info-ZIP 20 April 2009 (v3.0) ZIPINFO(1L)
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