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Accepted
Mark Lee
Asked: 2022-01-04 06:31:05 +0800 CST

How do I zip a folder without including all folders in the path?

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I am attempting to zip a website's home directory but the archive contains the entire path of folders before getting to the one to be zipped. The command zip -r compressed_data.zip /home/vivek/public_html results in compressed_data.zip containing home->vivek->public_html rather than simply public_html and its contents.

What switch can I add to the command to omit including all folders in the path?

command-line

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    By default, the zip process will store the full path relative to the current directory, so if you want to have an archive that looks like this:

    /config
/files
/lib
.htaccess
index.html

    Then you will need to be in public_html to begin with. That said, you can account for this with a one-liner:

    cd /home/vivek/public_html && zip -r ~/compressed_data.zip . * ; cd -

    This will change directories, compress the contents, then return you to the home directory.

    If you would like to do this as part of a script that is called via a cronjob or other process, create a file like this:

    #!/bin/bash
dir=$(cd "$(dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")" && pwd)
(cd "/home/vivek/public_html" && zip -r "${dir}/compressed_data.zip" ./*)

    You can read more about the limits of zip from its manual page ??

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