Sample code for 30+ languages & platforms
AutoIt

Extract ZIP Files Without Preserving Directory Paths Using DiscardPaths

See more Zip Examples

This example demonstrates how to use the DiscardPaths property to extract files from a ZIP archive without recreating the stored directory structure.

When DiscardPaths is set to _TRUE_, all extracted files are written directly into the target extraction directory, and any stored ZIP path information is ignored.

This is useful when:

  • Flattening ZIP contents into a single directory
  • Ignoring stored subdirectory structures during extraction
  • Extracting only the files themselves without recreating folders

Suppose the ZIP archive contains:

docs/readme.txt
docs/manual.pdf
images/logo.png

Normally, extracting the ZIP would create:

output/docs/readme.txt
output/docs/manual.pdf
output/images/logo.png

But when DiscardPaths is set to _TRUE_, the extracted files become:

output/readme.txt
output/manual.pdf
output/logo.png

The stored ZIP directory paths are discarded during extraction.

Chilkat AutoIt Downloads

AutoIt
Local $bSuccess = False

$bSuccess = False

$oZip = ObjCreate("Chilkat.Zip")

; Open an existing ZIP archive.
$bSuccess = $oZip.OpenZip("example.zip")
If ($bSuccess = False) Then
    ConsoleWrite($oZip.LastErrorText & @CRLF)
    Exit
EndIf

; Discard stored ZIP paths during extraction.
; 
; When DiscardPaths = True, all files are extracted
; directly into the target directory without recreating
; the ZIP directory structure.
$oZip.DiscardPaths = True

; Extract all files to the output directory.
; 
; Even if the ZIP contains:
; 
;     docs/readme.txt
;     docs/manual.pdf
;     images/logo.png
; 
; The extracted files become:
; 
;     c:/output/readme.txt
;     c:/output/manual.pdf
;     c:/output/logo.png
; 
Local $iNumFilesUnzipped = $oZip.Unzip("c:/output")

If ($iNumFilesUnzipped < 0) Then
    ConsoleWrite($oZip.LastErrorText & @CRLF)
    Exit
EndIf

ConsoleWrite("Number of files extracted = " & $iNumFilesUnzipped & @CRLF)

$oZip.CloseZip 

ConsoleWrite("Files extracted successfully." & @CRLF)