Zig

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.

Zig

const std = @import("std");
const chilkat = @import("chilkat");

pub fn main(init: std.process.Init) !void {
    const alloc = init.arena.allocator();

    const zip = try chilkat.Zip.init();
    defer zip.deinit();

    // Open an existing ZIP archive.
    zip.openZip("example.zip") catch {
        std.debug.print("{s}\n", .{try zip.getLastErrorText(alloc)});
        return;
    };

    // 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.setDiscardPaths(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
    //
    const num_files_unzipped = zip.unzip("c:/output");

    if (num_files_unzipped < 0) {
        std.debug.print("{s}\n", .{try zip.getLastErrorText(alloc)});
        return;
    }

    std.debug.print("Number of files extracted = {d}\n", .{num_files_unzipped});

    zip.closeZip();

    std.debug.print("Files extracted successfully.\n", .{});
}