Zip file bigger?

Tux-O-Matic · 10-30-2006, 04:03 PM

I recently zipped a folder, which was approximately 12 KB, and when I checked the size of the zip folder, it was approximately 12MB. Does this make sense?

matthewg42 · 10-30-2006, 05:02 PM

Where did you see the size of the directory as 12kb? If it was in a listing from ls -l, that's the size of the directory list - it does not include the size of the files and subdirectories inside the directory.

If you got the size from a file manager (when asking the size of the directory and it's contents), it may be that the directory has symbolic links to files "outside" of itself, and these were not included in the size of the directory, but these files were included in the zipfile.

Tux-O-Matic · 10-31-2006, 02:01 PM

I was in the GUI and I just ran my mouse over the file. It read to me the file/folder size.

matthewg42 · 11-01-2006, 05:19 AM

It could be the symlink think then - AFIAK, Gnome's Nautilus file manager doesn't follow symlinks when calculating folder size.

Open up the folder (original, not zipped/unzipped), and look for files which have the link emblem on the icon.

If you have many sub-directories to search for symlinks like that, you can use the find command in the terminal.

For example, to check for symlinks in the folder MyDirectory on your Desktop, here's how you'd do it:

Open a terminal window
Change to the directory you want to check using this command
Code:
```
cd Desktop/MyDirectory
```
Type this command in the terminal window. The output will be a list of symlinks anywhere in MyDirectory or any of it's sub-directories:
Code:
```
find . -type l
```
(the "l" at the end of the command is a lower case L, not the digit one)