12Ghosts Zip

12Ghosts - Zip

What does it do for me?

Fast compression, compatible with the ZIP industry standard, and with command line support. ZIP is the industry standard for compressed files, you may receive ZIP files by e-mail or download them from the Internet. Use 12-Zip to handle those files easily! 

What's so special about it?

• Graphical window to manage zip files
• List view with sortable columns. Name, date, compressed size, ratio, and more
• Large customizable toolbar buttons for the most used functions
• Add dialog box to easily select files to add, including the options: Include subfolders, Save extra folder info, Include only if archive attribute is set, Reset archive attribute, Include system and hidden files
• Add, Freshen, Move, Update files, different compression methods, wildcards accepted.
• Extract dialog box to easily select the extract path, includes many unzip options: All or selected files, Overwrite existing files, Skip older files (update), Use folder names, browse for new folder.
• View files by double-clicking
• Properties for zip archive or included files
• Faster than competing compression software: Our test revealed the following speed when compressing 10 MB of mixed files (text, executables, Word and Excel documents) at maximum compression (on a PII-233, 128 MB, Seagate Cheetah):
  - 12Ghosts Zip 21.0: 25.1 seconds
  - WinZip 7.0 SR-1: 31.7 seconds.
  - Result: WinZip needs 25% longer to compress the same amount of data.
• Very small executable: 220 KB (not 2000 KB or even more!)
• Industry ZIP standard supported, compatible with InfoGroup zip, gzip, PKZIP, WinZip, and many others
• Full support of InfoGroup zip/unzip command line options
• Environment variables are also supported (ZIPOPT and UNZIPOPT)

Where should I start?

Use 12-Zip to handle zip files easily in a graphical interface. Click New or Open to start working with a ZIP file. You can add files or extract them to a folder.

12-Zip is integrated into Windows Explorer. Just select files or folders to compress, right-click on the selected files, and select ZIP to... Per default this creates a ZIP file in the same folder with the same name as the clicked file, or in the parent folder of a folder. To unzip right-click on the ZIP file and select Unzip to... which automatically suggests a folder name.

12-Zip supports the ZIP industry standard

12-Zip is compatible with zip (Info-ZIP group), gzip, PKZIP, WinZip, and many other compression tools. 12-Zip adds compression code as provided by the Info-ZIP group. The executables and the source code is free and can be obtained from ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/infozip/. Thanks to all members of the Info-ZIP group for contributing to this project!

12-Zip Command line options

12-Zip supports the same command line options as the UNIX "zip" or "unzip" tools. To compress a folder use these parameters:

-S to include system and hidden files
-R to travel the directory structure recursively starting at the current directory (Tip: do a "cd" first)

For example, to zip the folder c:\data\mydata use these commands:

cd c:\data\mydata
12zip.exe zip -SR "c:\data\test.zip" *.*

To unzip just add the .zip file as first parameter. Optionally put the target folder after a -d option. For example:

12zip.exe unzip "c:\data\test.zip" -d "c:\data\mydata"

Again, the same can be accomplished with 12-Zip2 with these commands:

12zip2.exe "c:\data\test.exe" "c:\data\mydata" /subfolders

To unzip just execute the self-extracting .exe file.