how do I compress all files within a folder on Unix?

Question

I've been unable to compress the contents of a folder on Unix, note that I don't want to compress the directory itself but the contents inside.

so far.. to compresss the files I use:

compress /serv/test/file.sas7dbt

Lets say I want to compress all files in the folder test, how can I achieve this?

Consider carefully whether you really want to use compress. That's a very old compression program (it produces .Z files, if that refreshes anyone's memory). Typical Linux systems don't even have it, though I think gzip can uncompress compressed files. Newer and better compression programs include gzip and bzip2.

Martin Samson · Answer 1 · 2011-10-31 21:30:37Z

If you can use bzip2:

for file in /serv/test/*; do
    bzip2 -k $file
done

The -k option keeps the original file.

With compress, the loop would be really close.

If you can use tar, it will create a single file archive instead of multiple files.

EDIT: as gman pointed out, the find utility can be used to compress instead of doing a for loop:

find /serv/test/ -type f -exec bzip2 -k {} \;

It's really only compressing files separately that is the key. You could also use a find /path/ -type f -exec bzip2 .... to achieve the same result. You can also use the compression utility of your choice: zip/gzip/etc.

1 Answer