Recursively zipping directories

AckSed · 10-19-2007, 05:08 PM

I want to zip up a lot of directories recursively into separate zip files,each with the name of the directory as its filename,like so:

foobar/ -> foobar.zip

I've tried this shell code that I found elsewhere on the forums

Code:

for i in * ; do zip -r /zipdir/$i.zip $i ; done

but all I get is

Code:

zip error: Could not create output file (/zipdir/Mahou_Sensei_Negima_191.zip)
zip I/O error: No such file or directory

zip error: Could not create output file (/zipdir/zipdir.zip)

Would/could you use something like 'dirname'?

jschiwal · 10-19-2007, 08:14 PM

Why use zip and not gzip or bzip2? The latter are better supported in Linux.

You could use two find commands. The first one to return the directories, and the second one to return files in that directory.

Code:

for dir in $(find basedir/ -type d); do 
   find $dir/ -maxdepth 1 -type f -print0 -exec tar czvf ${dir}.tar.gz '{}' +; done

Using zip the zip command and options will be different. Also read the docs in /usr/share/loc/zip. There may be a filesize limit (for files you are archiving) and an archive size limit; that you need to keep in mind.

However, why not simple archive the entire directory recursively?
Otherwise you end up with files mixed in with archives as a result.

jschiwal · 10-19-2007, 08:29 PM

Looking back on your post, it looks like you do want to archive the directories in a base director recursively.

To get a list of directories, you can use:
for dir in */; do

Note the slash after the asterisk.

Code:

for dir in */; do zip -r $(basename $dir) ${dir}; done

Quote:

for i in * ; do zip -r /zipdir/$i.zip $i ; done

Another problem with what you tried is the slash before zipdir. This will try to create a zip file in root where you don't have write permissions.