VBScript

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.

VBScript

Dim fso, outFile
Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
'Create a Unicode (utf-16) output text file.
Set outFile = fso.CreateTextFile("output.txt", True, True)

success = 0

success = 0

set zip = CreateObject("Chilkat.Zip")

' Open an existing ZIP archive.
success = zip.OpenZip("example.zip")
If (success = 0) Then
    outFile.WriteLine(zip.LastErrorText)
    WScript.Quit
End If

' Discard stored ZIP paths during extraction.
' 
' When DiscardPaths = 1, all files are extracted
' directly into the target directory without recreating
' the ZIP directory structure.
zip.DiscardPaths = 1

' 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 < 0) Then
    outFile.WriteLine(zip.LastErrorText)
    WScript.Quit
End If

outFile.WriteLine("Number of files extracted = " & numFilesUnzipped)

zip.CloseZip 

outFile.WriteLine("Files extracted successfully.")

outFile.Close