Zip

Zip is a compressed archive file containing one or more files, as well as the act of creating it and its filename extension. Originally, such a "zip file" was created using 's utility program for MS-DOS.

History
The first two bytes of a zip file are the ASCII characters "PK" from, who developed the original PKZIP utility; "unzip" was the original corresponding de-archiver or the act of extracting files from a zip archive.

Due to the wide usage of the original program, the format has spread to Windows and Unix-based operating systems (such as Mac OS X and macOS), where the function is often built into file managers. Zip compression and decompression support is built into the Finder of macOS, and the Files app of iOS and iPadOS.