Unix zip directory but excluded specific subdirectories (and everything within them)

Question

I'm trying to zip a directory (on Unix via SSH) but I need to exclude a couple of subdirectories (and all files and directories within them).

So far I have this:

zip -r myarchive.zip dir1 -x dir1/ignoreDir/**/* 

That doesn't seem to work though.

I also tried

zip -r myarchive.zip dir1 -x dir1/ignoreDir1/* dir1/ignoreDir2/*

However that will still include subdirectories within ignoreDir1 and ignoreDir2.

The subdirectory structure in the directories that I want to exclude is quite substantial so I can't simply add each directory to the -x argument.

Does anyone know how to do this?

Answer 1

I was so close!

The actual command I need is:

zip -r myarchive.zip dir1 -x dir1/ignoreDir1/**\* dir1/ignoreDir2/**\*