Zipping (computer science)

Okay kiddo, let me explain zipping to you in a way that you will understand.

Imagine you have a big backpack that you need to carry around and it's full of clothes. But you also want to bring a lot of toys to play with, so you don't have much space left for them. What do you do?

Well, you can try to fold the clothes really small so they take up less space. This is kind of like what zipping does.

Zipping is a way to make files take up less space on your computer. Just like you can fold your clothes to make them fit better in your backpack, zipping compresses files so they take up less room on your computer's hard drive.

When you "zip" a file, a computer program takes all the information in the file and compresses it into a smaller package. This compressed package is called a "zip file". You can then store this zip file on your computer or share it with others.

To open a zip file, you need to "unzip" it, which means you reverse the compression to get back to the original files. This is like unrolling your clothes when you take them out of your backpack.

So, in summary, zipping is like compressing your files to make them take up less space on your computer, just like folding your clothes to make them fit better in your backpack.