Create Zip Archive Without Directory Structure Ubuntu

This article provides a concise guide on generating zip archives in Ubuntu that exclude directory paths. It focuses on the specific command-line flags needed to flatten the file structure within the archive. Readers will learn how to bundle multiple files from various folders into a single zip file without preserving the original folder hierarchy.

To create a zip archive with no directory structure, use the zip command with the -j flag. This flag instructs the utility to “junk” the path names, storing only the filenames at the root level of the archive.

The basic syntax for this command is:

zip -j archive_name.zip /path/to/files/*

For example, if you have multiple files inside a folder named reports, running the following command will add all files to reports.zip without including the reports folder name inside the archive:

zip -j reports.zip reports/*

If you need to include files from subdirectories but still want to flatten the entire structure, combine the -j flag with the -r flag for recursive processing:

zip -j -r archive_name.zip /path/to/folder/

This ensures every file found recursively is added to the archive without any associated folder paths.