Thread: Zipping files

I'm trying to zip up all of the files in a certain directory. Does C have any functions that can do this? If not, where can I find some?

No, C has no datacompression function, if that is what you are looking for. Here you can find info on datacompression:
http://www.data-compression.com/

It's not really about compression. I'd like to package 30 word docs into a single .zip file so I can email it.

Originally posted by GaPe
If it is not about compression than why did you post this thread here?

Because I'm trying to do it programatically in C. I'm writing a script that will run each morning on a reporting server. It will zip up the files in a directory and email that zip file out each morning. It is larger scale than this, because there are 20+ folders, but I can easily expand this once I get one folder going.

BTW, I've already done it in Java. But I'd like to replicate it with C so I can learn about C. Java has a class for this in the SDK.

Here's a task for you :

Write a program to merge a set of files into one file, then it must be able to split that file into the original files. The file names and file sizes can be stored in a text file.

Originally posted by Stoned_Coder
zlib is freely available and quite well documented.

That looks like the perfect solution. Thank you.

I'm sure I'll post back with newbie questions. This is all quite new to me.

Originally posted by Stoned_Coder
zlib is freely available and quite well documented.

Ok, I've downloaded the dll for zlib. It has some header files, a dll file, and a lib file. In my project (MSVC++ 6), my project structure looks like this...

Code:

/Project Root
  /Debug/
  /src/
    main.c
  RptSendMail.dsw
  etc...

How do I import the zlib library so I can use it? Do I need to import all of the given files or only the header and dll files? Where do I copy the files to? Thanks in advance. I'm a newb.

Originally posted by quzah
Read the docs.

Quzah.

I have been, that's why I waited so long to ask the question. This is also a MSVC++ 6.0 question, I'm curious as to what is considered "best practice" when dealing with header files and importing dlls. Also, overall file structure of applications.

This (http://www.gzip.org/zlib/manual.html) helps a great deal in what the functions do and how to use them, but it doesn't talk about making them accessable to your app. It assumes you've already got access to them.

Ok, I went to Project -> Add to Project -> Files and added the zlib.lib file. My source file (main.c) and all of my header files are in the /rootDirOfProject/src/ directory. My main.c file includes looks like this:

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <src/ioapi.h>
#include <src/unzip.h>
#include <src/zconf.h>
#include <src/zip.h>
#include <src/zlib.h>

I'm getting an error when trying to compile. It cannot find the header files.

Code:

Cannot open include file: 'src/ioapi.h': No such file or directory