Zip Junk Paths Option Not Working

I have a bit of an odd one that I can’t seem to figure out.

Here’s the setup. I am downloading a bunch of files given to a script via array. The files are not necessarily in the same folder, so I don’t think just using cd to change directory and then add the files I want is going to work.

I have added -j to my shell command in order to not include the directories, and it worked… kinda. Now I have all the files in the top level of the zip, but it’s also included the directories and duplicate versions of the files in the appropriate directories.

Any thoughts?

Edit: code added.

I have an array of files like this:

Images
    --image1.jpg
    --image2.jpg
Other images
    --image3.jpg
    --image4.jpg
Other folderAnother subfolderWhy so many folders
    --image5.jpg

So what I’d like is to have all the images in the root of the zip, but what I’m getting is both directories and junked directories in one zip:

Zip
    --Images
        --image1.jpg
        --image2.jpg
    --Other images
        --image3.jpg
        --image4.jpg
    --Other folder
        --Another subfolder
            --Why so many folders
                --image5.jpg
                --image6.jpg
    --image1.jpg
    --image2.jpg
    --image3.jpg
    --image4.jpg
    --image5.jpg
    --image6.jpg

My code is quite simple, I’m using -j to strip out the directory and passing an array of files to zip. If I remove the -j, it only includes a single copy of the files, although in the folders, so I know the issue is not my array doubling up on the files.

zip -jq zip array_of_files

Edit Solved. Kind of.

For some reason when I placed the -j at the end of the command line, it works as expected. Unsure why that would matter, but it fixed it. Here’s what worked.

zip zipname array_of_files -jq 

Answer

You can use a combination of find and zip together. Run the above command at the same level as the individual folders.

find . -type f -name "*.jpg" -print | zip -jq myfile.zip -@

The find command lists the jpg files from he current path and with the -@ option in zip is to read from stdin which the previous command produces. And the -jq flag for junk paths.

With the above command, I was able to achieve the structure as you intended. Use unzip -l to list the files under the archive without extraction.

$ unzip -l myfile.zip
Archive:  myfile.zip
  Length     Date   Time    Name
 --------    ----   ----    ----
        0  11-26-16 13:08   image1.jpg
        0  11-26-16 13:09   image2.jpg
        0  11-26-16 13:09   image3.jpg
        0  11-26-16 13:09   image4.jpg
 --------                   -------
        0                   4 files

The above simulation of mine is for your original input, when you had 4 images in total.