Ubuntu/Debian — How to Unzip Into a Folder

You may download a ZIP file from the Internet and need to unzip it to a specific directory. On Unix and Linux, you can stay in the command line and unzip a packaged ZIP file to the folder of your choice!

Servers for Hackers Series Overview

Unzip Into a Folder

All Linux and Unix systems ship with the unzip command. It’s a command-line utility allowing you to unzip a compressed file.

By default, the unzip command extracts the contents of the ZIP file into the current directory. Instead of polluting the current directory with extracted files, you may unzip the files into a new folder using the unzip -d flag:

# “unzip -d” extracts the content into a directory
unzip path/to/file -d path/to/folder

# Example
unzip fonts.zip -d ./new-future-studio-fonts  

Notice: the unzip command won’t create non-existent paths on your disk. If you want to extract the archive into a non-existent folder path, you’ll run into errors.

For example, a directory non-existent-folder does not exist in the current path. If you want to unzip into a subdirectory of this folder, you’ll run into an error.

$ unzip fonts_otf.zip -d ./non-existent-folder/fonts
Archive:  fonts_otf.zip  
checkdir:  cannot create extraction directory: ./non-existent-folder/fonts  
           No such file or directory

That’s it. Unzipping a file from the command line is pretty straightforward using unzip <file> -d <folder>.

Explore the Library

Find interesting tutorials and solutions for your problems.