Windows XP command line for zipping files

Question

Is there a way to zip the files in XP using the windows default zip utility through command prompt?

Answer 1

when i wanted to use zip a file thru command line in the past, i've used 7zip, which comes with a CLI. just add the folder to the PATH.

Answer 2

You can't use this tool from the command line in Windows XP.

The best solution would be the free open source tool 7zip, which is very good for creating zip files. I have used this from the command line in XP, and for writing batch files, and it's very good. A simple example:

7za a files.zip *.txt

(this adds all the text files in the current directory to an new archive called files.zip)

There is also the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit, which can be installed on XP and includes a command line compress, but you will not get such a good result with this (less reliable, worse compression, harder to use and less options)

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Edit: Actually, I just found this question, which does have a (somewhat convoluted) way to do this. But they recommend 7zip too.