Perl Archive::Zip creates unnecessary folders - perl

Question

Assuming I have the following array of file names I wish to zip
my #files = ("C:\Windows\Perl\test1.txt", "C:\Windows\Perl\test2.txt", "C:\Windows\Perl\test3.txt");
If I do
$obj = Archive::Zip->new();
foreach (#files)
{
$obj->addFile($_);
}
$obj->writeToFileNamed("zippedFolders.zip");
When I open zippedFolders.zip I see it contains subfolders, namely Windows and Perl, the latter which actually contains test1, test2, and test3. For some reason, the folders themselves are getting zipped up.
How can I make it so that only the files get zipped up and not have to click Windows then Perl folders to access the zipped files?

Answer 1

As you have see, if you use addFile to add a disk file to an archive, then Archive::Zip adds an archive member with the same path as file had originally. If you want it stored as something different then you can pass a second parameter that will be used as the name and path of the archive member created.
For your purposes I suggest you use the core File::Basename module to remove the path from the filename and pass just the basename as the second parameter.
The code below demonstrates.
Something else you need to be aware of is that you can't use single backslashes in Perl double quotes - they will be seen as escaping the following character and simply disappear. You can use pairs of backslashes in the string, use single quotes instead, use forward slashes instead (Perl will sort things out) or if there are no spaces in the filenames then you can use qw() as I have in this program.
use strict;
use warnings;
use Archive::Zip;
use File::Basename 'basename';
my #files = qw/
C:\Windows\Perl\test1.txt
C:\Windows\Perl\test2.txt
C:\Windows\Perl\test3.txt
/;
my $zip = Archive::Zip->new;
foreach my $file (#files) {
my $member = basename $file;
printf qq{Adding file "%s" as archive member "%s"\n}, $file, $member;
$zip->addFile($file, $member);
}
$zip->writeToFileNamed('zippedFolders.zip');
output
Adding file "C:\Windows\Perl\test1.txt" as archive member "test1.txt"
Adding file "C:\Windows\Perl\test2.txt" as archive member "test2.txt"
Adding file "C:\Windows\Perl\test3.txt" as archive member "test3.txt"