PowerShell

Extract ZIP Files Without Preserving Directory Paths Using DiscardPaths

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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.

PowerShell

Add-Type -Path "C:\chilkat\ChilkatDotNet47-x64\ChilkatDotNet47.dll"

$success = $false

$success = $false

$zip = New-Object Chilkat.Zip

# Open an existing ZIP archive.
$success = $zip.OpenZip("example.zip")
if ($success -eq $false) {
    $($zip.LastErrorText)
    exit
}

# Discard stored ZIP paths during extraction.
# 
# When DiscardPaths = $true, all files are extracted
# directly into the target directory without recreating
# the ZIP directory structure.
$zip.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
# 
$numFilesUnzipped = $zip.Unzip("c:/output")

if ($numFilesUnzipped -lt 0) {
    $($zip.LastErrorText)
    exit
}

$("Number of files extracted = " + $numFilesUnzipped)

$zip.CloseZip()

$("Files extracted successfully.")