exclude confusion: what does it match against?

Wayne Davison wayned at samba.org
Fri Mar 26 20:29:03 GMT 2004


On Thu, Mar 25, 2004 at 11:03:31PM -0500, Andrew Pimlott wrote:
> The exact filename tested against include/exclude patterns is not
> always obvious, and the documentation is somewhat ambiguous about it.
> This bites particularly when using patterns starting with '/'.

Yes, this could certainly use some improvement to make things clearer.
I've never liked the description of the patterns being relative to the
destination directory, though, since the patterns also affect files on
the source side.  I prefer the phrase "root of the transfer", which
would have to be defined in the documentation.

What about something like this?

    The filenames matched against the exclude/include patterns are
    relative to the "root of the transfer".  If you think of the
    transfer as a subtree of names that are being sent from sender
    to receiver, the root is where the tree starts to be duplicated
    in the destination directory.  This root governs where patterns
    that start with a / match (see below).

    Because the matching is relative to the transfer root, changing
    the trailing slash on the source path or changing your use of
    the --relative option affects the names you need to use in your
    matching.  For example, using these rsync commands:

        rsync -a /home/me /dest
        rsync -a /home/me/ /dest
        rsync -a --relative /home/me /dest

    the file /home/me/foo/bar would be matched using, respectively:

        /me/foo/bar
        /foo/bar
        /home/me/foo/bar

    The easiest way to see what name you should include/exclude is
    to just look at the output when using --verbose and put a / in
    front of the name (use the --dry-run option if you're not yet
    ready to copy any files).

..wayne..


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