71

I'm making a shell script to package some files. I'm zipping a directory like this:

zip -r /Users/me/development/something/out.zip /Users/me/development/something/folder/

The problem is that the resultant out.zip archive has the entire file path in it. That is, when unzipped, it will have the whole "/Users/me/development/anotherthing/" path in it. Is it possible to avoid these deep paths when putting a directory into an archive?

When I run zip from inside the target directory, I don't have this problem.

zip -r out.zip ./folder/

In this case, I don't get all the junk. However, the script in question will be called from wherever.

FWIW, I'm using bash on Mac OS X 10.6.

1
  • Symlink could does the trick. ln -s /path/to/sth .; zip -rq sth.zip sth; rm sth
    – DawnSong
    May 18, 2022 at 1:04

5 Answers 5

123

Your script should use cd or pushd and popd to move into the directory that will be the root of the archive before issuing the zip command. How you do this exactly will depend on how the script knows what to zip up. But, if you want /Users/me/development/something/folder zipped with internal paths of just ./folder, you'd need to do this:

pushd /Users/me/development/something
zip -r /path/to/out.zip ./folder/
popd

That will result in your out.zip containing the relative paths you want.

If you need assistance with scripting that, you'll need to show us your script.

13
  • 11
    no problem. i do this in one-liners on the commandline all the time, eg: $ pushd /some/path ; do-something ; popd ... or even with subshells: $ ( cd /some/path ; do-something ) Mar 14, 2010 at 2:25
  • 1
    @~quack: +1 especially for the sub-shell technique in the comment. Mar 14, 2010 at 4:39
  • 3
    Is there not a way to do this without specifying the absolute path for the zip file?
    – orange80
    Jun 28, 2013 at 7:18
  • 3
    Why are you playing games with the path? Why not use zip -j?
    – jww
    Jan 4, 2015 at 1:15
  • 2
    -j doesn't work right with -r if you want the paths of the files nested inside the specified folder
    – Lee Meador
    Mar 24, 2020 at 21:35
12

The problem is that the resultant out.zip archive has the entire file path in it.
...
Is it possible to avoid these deep paths when putting a directory into an archive?

Yes. Use the -j option with zip. -j is "junk the path". According to the man page on zip:

Store just the name of a saved file (junk the path), and do not store directory names. By default, zip will store the full path (relative to the current directory).

Using -j means the following command:

zip -j myarchive.zip file1.txt dir1/file2.txt dir2/dir3/file3.txt ../file4.txt

Will create an archive that looks like:

myarchive.zip
    |
    +-- file1.txt
    +-- file2.txt
    +-- file3.txt
    +-- file4.txt
3
  • 10
    Doesn't this also junk all paths, even those in the 'folder' directory? I think the OP only wants to get rid of the path on the command line. Sep 14, 2015 at 7:37
  • 1
    This might not be the answer for this question, but it's what I need. Mar 16, 2017 at 0:50
  • 1
    This answer incorrectly assumes user wants a flat zip. This is a bad assumption and can cause the script to fail if two files in different sub-folders have the same name. Feb 12, 2019 at 19:45
10

There is pushd and popd and $OLDPWD. Assuming the $PWD is /Users/me/development do:

pushd something/folder
zip -r $OLDPWD/something/out.zip *
popd

Now the $PWD is back to /Users/me/development

2

Zip without including paths, but include parent directory, and without having to hardcode its name

A slightly improved version of @quack's accepted answer.

If you are doing this in a script and don't want to have to hardcode the parent directory, you can do this:

pushd /Users/me/development/something/folder/;
zip -r ../out.zip ../$(basename $PWD)
popd;

The ../$(basename $PWD) will ensure that the files are retained in the parent directory when extracted.

So now unzip my.zip will give a folder containing all your files:

folder
├── file1
├── file2
├── dir1
│   ├── file3
│   ├── file4

Instead of littering the current directory with the unzipped files:

file1
file2
dir1
├── file3
├── file4
0

I think this is the most compact version and the one that works best.

OLDPWD=$PWD env -C /path/to/directory zip -r "$OLDPWD/directory.zip" .

This will make a zip file in the current directory named "directory.zip". Inside of the zip file the there will be the contents of /path/to/directory in the same exact file structure.

2
  • Does MacOS have the GNU version of env? TTBOMK it mostly uses FreeBSD userland. If it does or you do, you don't need a separate variable, just env _C /newdir zip -r "$PWD/zipfile" . -- the variable expansion is completed before env is started. Jan 26 at 4:24
  • I'm on GNU/Linux so I don't have it. Thanks for the info tho
    – Flafy
    Mar 8 at 17:09

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .