Escape character for --exclude?

[Aaron Morris]

On 8/6/06, Jeffrey Ellis <jellis at dhnet.us> wrote:
>
>  Hi--
>
>  Ok. I've now run into the next thing I can't find in man, and this time, I
> googled as well:
>
>  --exclude /afs/\*
>
>  I thought you could just say:
>
>  --exclude /afs/* or even --exclude /afs/
>
>  To exclude the entire afs directory. Can you explain what the purpose of
> the \ and * are here?
>
>  Thanks again :)
>
>  All My Best,
>  Jeffrey

The escape character has nothing to do with rsync, it is supposed to
keep the shell from globbing.  You can usually encapsulate strings
within quotes to acheive the same effect as using escape characters
(in borne shell, anyway).

--exclude /afs/\*

is the same as

--exclude "/afs/*"

For an explanation of the asterisk, please see the INCLUDE/EXCLUDE
PATTERN RULES section in the rsync man page.  It explains them better
than I ever could in an email and also includes some real world
examples and their meaning.

-- 
Aaron W Morris (decep) <aaronwmorris at gmail.com>