How to create a zip file without entire directory structure

Question

I am trying to create a zip file and want to preserve most of the directory structure, but not the rootdir as defined from the command line. The command I'm using is:

zip -r out.zip /foo/bar/

I'd like it to recurse through bar and add all files with preserved directory structure (which it does). However I do not want 'foo' to be the top level directory in the zip file created. I would like bar to be the top level directory.

Is there any easy way to go about this? I realize I could change directories before zipping to avoid the problem, but I'm looking for a solution that doesn't require this.

Answer 1

This should do it:

cd /foo/bar/ 
zip -r ../out.zip *

The archive will be in /foo/out.zip

Answer 2

I don't believe zip has a way to exclude the top level directory. I think your best bet would be to do something like: pushd /foo; zip -r out.zip ./bar; popd;

But this is exactly the sort of answer you said you didn't want.