Zipping A Directory In Linux Terminal

How do I zip files in Linux so that I cam email them to my friend? How do I zip files on server using the shell prompt?

zip is a compression and file packaging utility for Unix, Linux, VMS, MSDOS, OS/2, Windows NT, Minix, Atari and Macintosh, Amiga and Acorn RISC and many other operating systems.

Syntax

zip’s syntax is:

zip file.zip file1 file2 
zip file.zip dir1 
zip -option file.zip dir1

To zip directory called pics in your home directory (/home/you/pics), type the following command:
$ zip -r myvacationpics.zip /home/you/pics/
or
$ zip -r myvacationpics /home/you/pics/
The -r option recurse into directories (all files and directories inside pics) to produced zip file called myvacationpics.zip. You can travel the directory structure recursively starting at the current directory. In this example, all the files matching *.c in the tree starting at the current directory are stored into a zip archive named mycode.zip.

zip -R mycode.zip "*.c"

Please note that *.c will match file.c, dir1/file.c and dir1/dir2/.c and so on.