How to zip/unzip a directory with password

Zip and unzip utility can be used to compress a file or directory on Mac. These should also work on Ubuntu or other Linux flavours. Here are quick instructions to do it:

Zip a directory/file with password

To zip a directory run the following:

$ zip -er archive.zip dir_to_be_archived
Enter password: 
Verify password: 
  adding: dir_to_be_archived/ (stored 0%)
  adding: dir_to_be_archived/file1.txt (stored 0%)

It will ask you to enter a password and will not echo it. In case you want to specify password on command line, you can use -P

$ zip -P password123 -r archive.zip dir_to_be_archived
  adding: archive.zip (stored 0%)
  adding: dir_to_be_archived/ (stored 0%)

To zip a file with password:

$ zip -P password123 file.zip file_to_be_archived

Unzip an archive with password

To unzip simply double click on zip file and enter the password. From command line simply use unzip

 $ unzip archive.zip

or with password on command line

$ unzip -P password123 archive.zip 

In case you want to extract archive to a specific directory use:

$ unzip -P password123 archive.zip -d /some/destination/dir