How does WinXP's "Send to Compressed (zipped) Folder" decide what to include in zip file?

Question

I'm not going to be too surprised if I get shot-down for asking a "non programming" question, but maybe somebody knows ...

I was zipping the contents of my subversion sandbox using WinXP's inbuilt "Send to Compressed (zipped) Folder" capability and was surprised to find that the .zip file created did not contain the .svn directories and their contents.

I had always assumed that all files were included and I can't locate which property/option/attribute controls inclusion or otherwise. Can anybody help?

Thanks, Tom

EDIT:

So, isnt there a smart way to handle the problem? The real problem (show hidden files set to true. .svn folders are not compressed because windows does not consider them as valid folders) is still un-answered.

Thanks...

Answer 1

Send to zipped Folder does not traverse into folders without names before dot (like ".svn"). If you had other folders that begin with dots, those would not be included either. Files without names are not excluded. Hidden attribute does not come into play.

Might be a bug, might be by design. Remember that Windows explorer does not allow creating folders beginning with dot, even though the underlying system can handle them.