<s>[INST] How to create a zip archive of a directory How can I create a zip archive of a directory structure in Python? 
 [/INST] As others have pointed out, you should use zipfile. The documentation tells you what functions are available, but doesn't really explain how you can use them to zip an entire directory. I think it's easiest to explain with some example code:
#!/usr/bin/env python
import os
import zipfile

def zipdir(path, ziph):
    # ziph is zipfile handle
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(path):
        for file in files:
            ziph.write(os.path.join(root, file))

if __name__ == '__main__':
    zipf = zipfile.ZipFile('Python.zip', 'w', zipfile.ZIP_DEFLATED)
    zipdir('tmp/', zipf)
    zipf.close()

Adapted from: http://www.devshed.com/c/a/Python/Python-UnZipped/
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