zip warning - name not matched

Question

I am getting the following error while using zip in my bash script

zip warning: name not matched: test.png test2.png

#!/bin/bash
files_to_zip="test.png test2.png"
zipfile_name=result$(date "+%Y.%m.%d-%H.%M.%S").zip
zip "$zipfile_name"  "$files_to_zip"

Note: The images are in the same directory as the script and when i execute zip test.zip test.png test2.png , the zip get created just fine.

Brittani

If you substitute your vars into command you'll get zip "result-2017-09-02.zip" "test.png test2.png" this is different from what you want to achieve – Caterpillar

The name of the zip is an example , i use test.zip for simplicity – Brittani

I mean your last parameter goes into same "" so is treated as one file name which will not be found – Caterpillar

@Artemy Vysotsky but $files_to_zip contain list of files as a string separated by spaces so zip should know they are different filenames – Brittani

Why you have not tried zip test.zip "test.png test2.png"? If you sure zip has to understand it – Caterpillar

Ahh you are right....zip is treating it as a single filename.What would be the most elegant solution in this situation – Brittani

Well use zip "$zipfile_name" $files_to_zip and if you have special chars or spaces inside the names - add quotes inside the files_to_zip variable – Caterpillar

How could i missed that...word splitting is exactly what was needed here.#Lackofsleep .Post it as an answer – Brittani

Note that this also shows if you try to zip symlinks that point to non-existing files. In this case add --symlinks – Scag

Answer 1

When names are combined inside same quotes whole string is treated as file name. Use

zip "$zipfile_name" $files_to_zip

instead. And if your png names have special characters like spaces - add quotes or escape this characters inside the $files_to_zip variable

Caterpillar

Answer 2

add this line before sorting the files in directory

IFS=$'\n' 
files=($(ls | sort))

This worked for me and handled for numbers, dashes, special characters in the input files that are being converting to the zip file

Linkoski