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mralexgray
Asked: 2011-08-23 03:12:03 +0800 CST

How to "undo" an "unzip" performed in terminal / CLI?

  • 772

I know this is possible with a botched unTAR, although I can't recall the exact command.... but is it possible to "undo" a recent "unzip" command, in this case, using the mac terminal?

This is using /usr/bin/unzip on 10.7, with UnZip 5.52.

Lets say I started with a folder structure like this....

admin$ pwd
    /usr/local/src
admin$ ls
    pots            pans           scrubbers.zip
admin$ unzip scrubbers.zip
admin$ ls
    pots               pans           scrubbers.zip
    zebraturd.doc      README.md      morestuffididntmeantoputhere.py      cleanme.junkmail                 
    surfraw.2.html     scrubbers.explaination

how can i just "rezip" or parse the zip file in reverse?

there is a section in the zip file that sorta lists the files in the archive, although quite seriously mangled.. for example..

 0L'†C  0L'†C  !∏V≤B PK&Å‘:√@`¢îF3$ Lmacos/lib/libexiv2.2.1.0.dylib

without manually sifting through that list, is there a magic bullet for this?

linux

4 Answers

  1. You could try

    unzip -t zipfile.zip | awk '{print $2}' | tail -n +2 | xargs echo

    or 

    unzip -t zipfile.zip | awk '{print $2}' | sed 's/zipfile.zip//' | xargs echo

    and if you have spaces in filenames

    unzip -l zipfile.zip | tail -n +4 | head -n -2 | awk '{print "\""substr($0,index($0,$4))"\""}' | xargs rm

    check that the output is sensible and then change echo for rm. In particular check that your zipfile isn't listed in the output. This isn't perfect as it will leave directories untouched but it may be easier than wading through it all by hand.

    • 11
  2. Best Answer

    Iain's answer threw a head-related error on my machine that I couldn't figure out... so I went ahead and wrote little BASH script that includes part of his solution, and that works quite nicely... just pass the original zip as an argument to this ununzip.sh script.. Comment the rm line to preview the "action".

    #!/bin/bash
COUNT=0                                   # USAGE:
PURGE=CLEAR                               # chmod +x ununzip.sh && ./ununzip.sh file.zip
THATDARNzip=$1                            # THIS IS YOUR file.zip, THE ARGUMENT
PURGE=(`unzip -t THATDARNzip | awk '{print $2}' |  xargs echo`)
COUNT=${#PURGE[@]}                        # HOW MUCH STUFF GOT UNZIPPED?
echo "total items "$COUNT
echo -e "item at 0 is ${PURGE[0]}"        # WE DON'T DELETE THE ORIGINAL ZIP FILE
while [ "$COUNT" -gt 0 ]; do
echo -e "deleting ${PURGE[${COUNT}]}"
rm -r "${PURGE[${COUNT}]}"                # COMMENT THIS LINE FOR A DRY RUN
COUNT=$[ $COUNT - 1 ]
done
exit 0
    • 5

  3. I just manually delete the crud, whilst strenuously admonishing myself for not checking the zip file was sensibly formed (which they invariably aren't) with unzip -l first.

    • 3

  4. Try this:

    $ unzip -l scrubbers.zip | sed '1,3d' | sed 'N;$!P;$!D;$d' | awk '{ print $4 }' | xargs rm -fr
    • 3