How to Unzip Multiple Files with Command Line

#terminal #cli #unzip

Recently I've download a lot of zip files from the internet to my Raspberry Pi.
After all download progress finished, I see the files and try to unzip them all.
My first reflect is to type unzip *.zip just like any other standard unix command (rm, cp, etc.).
But, to my surprise, it doesn't work at all.

Take a look at the following snippet.
This is an example output I get when I try to unzip multiple zip files with the wrong command.

$ unzip *.zip
Archive:  file-01.zip
caution: filename not matched:  file-02.zip
caution: filename not matched:  file-03.zip

So, how to solve this problem?

It's actually pretty simple, just wrap the *.zip with apostrophe (') like the following snippet.

unzip '*.zip'

Since now the command is written correctly, here is the expected output.

$ unzip '*.zip'
Archive:  file-01.zip
  inflating: file-01.iso

Archive:  file-02.zip
  inflating: file-02.iso

Archive:  file-03.zip
  inflating: file-03.iso

3 archives were successfully processed.

It's a success!

I also made a video to visualize what I wrote here.