+# snag the command line arguments into an array of names.
+for i in "$@"; do dirs+=("$i"); done
+
+# if there were no arguments, use the current directories list of directories.
+if [ ${#dirs[@]} -eq 0 ]; then
+ # using a temp file is clumsy but after a lot of different methods being tried, this one
+ # worked and wasn't super ugly.
+ tempfile="$(mktemp /tmp/dirlist.XXXXXX)"
+ find $dir -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d -exec echo "dirs+=(\"{}\");" ';' >$tempfile
+ source "$tempfile"
+#echo dirs default to: ${dirs[@]}
+ \rm -f $tempfile
+fi
+
+# takes a directory name as an argument and sucks the directory
+# into a timestamped zip file.