How can I create zip file with the date in its name?

Question

In the command-line, how can I create a zip file from a directory, whose name would be the current date?

I can use zip -r name dir, but how give it the date for a name?

Answer 1

By slipping the date command into the filename:

zip -r "archive-$(date +"%Y-%m-%d").zip" file1 file2 file3 file4

That just does year-month-day but you can use times, weeks, etc if that suits you more. You can read more about the substitution strings in man date.