The unzip utility has odd, non-Unixy output handling. There are messages which are almost impossible to (guess how to) redirect or squelch. This includes (but may not be limited to) error output from the unzip -t command. squeeze$ unzip -t -qq LATAM43.zip >/dev/null ... produces a lot of output ... squeeze$ unzip -t -qq LATAM43.zip 2>/dev/null ... still produces a lot of output ... squeeze$ unzip -t -qq LATAM43.zip >file 2>&1 squeeze$ # oddly, only one copy of the output in file! squeeze$ unzip -t -qq LATAM43.zip | less ... still messes up my screen ... squeeze$ unqip -t -qq LATAM43.zip 2>&1 | less squeeze$ # again, works, but not what you would expect Unfortunately, the file in question contains material I cannot share, but it should not be hard to come by broken ZIP archives. As a rough approximation, you can observe the same behavior (but very different error output) with just squeeze$ echo moo>moo.zip squeeze$ unzip -t -qq moo.zip 2>/dev/null /* era */