UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Having problems using the -m option when zipping up a file

# zip -m test *.jpg

zip error: Invalid command arguments (no such option: .)

# zip -m test.jpg *.jpg

zip error: Invalid command arguments (no such option: .)



any clue on what is causing this error?

It used to work when zipping up a large number of files with the same extension.

Is the -m option being used wrong or?

thanks!

bump


thanks!

Why would you want to use -m option? don't use that. Just use a simple "zip" and it will work.

-m Move the specified files into the zip archive; actu-
ally, this deletes the target directories/files after
making the specified zip archive. If a directory
becomes empty after removal of the files, the directory
is also removed. No deletions are done until zip has
created the archive without error. This is useful for
conserving disk space, but is potentially dangerous so
it is recommended to use it in combination with -T to
test the archive before removing all input files.

Does *.jpg expand to something which looks like an option to zip? I.e. what does echo *.jpg say, is there a file there whose name starts with a dash?

actually there was a couple .jpg files that started with a -
would this affect the process? I think it does or did. Now what we did was delete and recreate the whole directory, populated it with .jpg's again and did the zip -m filename *.jpg

and it bombed like before. But I cant reproduce the other in other directories wich is strange indeed.

If you say zip -funnyfile.jpg then it will think "-funnyfile.jpg" is an option string, and complain. The customary solution is to disambiguate it with an explicit path name, like zip ./-funnyfile.jpg