Unzipping a batch of files

Question

When I try

 unzip filename.zip

it works. However, I need to unzip a series of zip files.

Why are:

 find . -name "*.zip" -print0 | xargs -0 unzip

or

 ls *.zip | xargs unzip

not working?

In both cases I get a "caution: filename not matched: " message.

Answer 1

You can issue the command:

$ unzip '*.zip'

Look here for reference.

Answer 2

Your commands are not working because they stuff all the files onto the same command line. While that works with most programs, unzip will take the first argument as the zip file, and any after the first as files to extract from it. You need to execute the command once for each file:

find . -name "*.zip" -print0 | xargs -0 -n1 unzip

Or

find . -name '*.zip' -exec unzip {} \;

Answer 3

In bash you could also do the following:

for i in *.zip; do
    unzip "$i"
done

Also unzip can take the -d switch so you can target the output to different locations.

For example:

uzdir=/path/to/unzips
for i in *.zip; do
    [ -d "$uzdir/$i" ] || mkdir -p "$uzdir/$i"
    unzip "$i" -d "$uzdir/$i"
done

Answer 4

There is a much easier solution than the looping ones given above, use the directory -d flag:

unzip -o somefiles.zip -d $directoryPath