7-zip commandline

Question

I'm creating a backup utility that zips all the files listed in a text file. I am using MS ACCESS as my front-end and 7-Zip for compression. These are the commands I am using:

7zG.exe a c:\Backup\backup.zip
@c:\temp\tmpFileList.txt

All the files are compressed without their path. Is there a way to include the path for each file in the zip file? Then when backup.zip is extracted the files would be restored to their original folder structure.

Thanks

Answer 1

In this 7-zip forum thread, in which many people express their desire for this feature, 7-zip's developer Igor points to the FAQ question titled "How can I store full path of file in archive?" to achieve a similar outcome.

In short:

• separate files by volume (one list for files on C:\, one for D:\, etc)
• then for each volume's list of files,
  1. chdir to the root directory of the appropriate volume (eg, cd /d C:\)
  2. create a file listing with paths relative to the volume's root directory (eg, C:\Foo\Bar becomes Foo\Bar)
  3. perform 7z a archive.7z @filelist as before with this new file list
  4. when extracting with full paths, make sure to chdir to the appropriate volume's root directory first

Answer 2

The command-line program for 7-Zip is 7z or 7za. Here's a helpful post on the options available. The -r (recurse) option stores paths.