__MACOSX foldres when zipping a file

Yes, those directories contain resource fork information and other metadata. I don't know of a way to suppress this if you use the built-in "compress" function in the Finder. However, you can easily create a zip file from the command line using the "zip" command (or tar/gz or bzip2 commands, for that matter), which won't contain this extra data.

Additionally, you could probably also write an Automator workflow that could zip up a folder or a bunch of selected objects without the added stuff.

Can you give better directions for zipping from "command line"? DO you mean in terminal?

Do I need to download other software?

I cannot use the compress function and have all the resource forks included.

Thanks

Yes, in terminal. You can just type 'zip' to get a basic "how-to", or 'man zip' to get full details. I used:

zip -r zipname.zip .

to put all files and subdirs from my current directory into 'zipname.zip'. It still included .DS_Store (in every directory) however, so I tried:

zip -r zipname.zip . -x .DS_Store

but the .DS_Store files are not excluded from the ZIP operation. Anyone know how to keep these files from being included?

zip -r zipname.zip . -x .DS_Store

zip -r zipname.zip . -x .DS_\*

or to avoid zipping any dot directories,

zip -r zipname.zip *

Thanks, but the .DS files still show up in every subdirectory. I tried both of the methods you mention, BTW.

I gave up that stuff and downloaded YemuZip. It is fast and easy. However, I put a Y in my zip file names so when I look at them later to email I know they are Win compatible. I have many old zip files from Apple zip utility I do not want to send to win users.

Thanks. The YemuZip tool works wonderfully. The the cli was at least a little fun, or should I say, nostalgic. Took me back to the PKZIP for DOS days (now I'm dating myself.)