til/unix/check-what-is-inside-a-zip-file.md

Check What Is Inside A Zip File

Before unzipping a file, it can be useful to check the contents. You can learn a few things from doing this. First off, are all the files nested under some extra top-level directory? How many files are in there? How big are certain files? Etc.

The -l flag to unzip can help answer these questions.

❯ unzip -l zipped-files.zip
Archive:  zipped-files.zip
  Length      Date    Time    Name
---------  ---------- -----   ----
        0  08-22-2026 08:54   files-to-zip/
       14  08-22-2026 08:54   files-to-zip/data.json
       38  08-22-2026 08:53   files-to-zip/notes.md
       14  08-22-2026 08:53   files-to-zip/hello.txt
---------                     -------
       66                     4 files

Notice that the first line is for files-to-zip/ which tells us that everything is nested under the top-level directory that was probably the target of the zip command. Everything is organized into a table with labeled columns which allows us to answer our questions and get a good idea of what is in there.

In my experience, zip files tend to have dozens to hundreds of files, so it is even better to pipe the above to a pager like less. That way you can search and navigate through everything that's in there.

See man unzip for more details.