UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi All

Please excuse another straightforward question. When creating a tar archive from a directory I am attempting to use wildcards to eliminate certain filetypes (otherwise the archive gets too large). So I am looking for something along these lines.

tar -cf archive.tar * <minus all *.rst files>

Can anyone help.

Thanks
Ed

I found the answer to my question here.

ITworld.com - UNIX SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION - Trimming Tar Files

Apologies I should have read the man page a little more closely before posting.

Ed

Helo, C3000.
There are several possibilities, depending on your tar version.
For instance, in my GNU tar 1.15.1, there are an option (have a look at tar man pages) like:
If this is not the case, you may do something like:

Code:

tar cvzf mytarfile.tgz $(find . ! -name '*rst')

Regards.

Hello grial

I am running the HP-UX tar so unfortunately your first suggestion using -- exclude is not available to me and indeed my optimistic post above including the web link is not relevant in my case.

Your second option is more promising however I am attempting this opertion in the C shell and the command substitution $(find . ! -name '*rst') seems to be throwing a shell error. Is command substitution of this form possible in the csh and if not what are the options assuming I do not want to just fire up another shell.

Thanks

Ed

Well, I'm not used to csh, but I think this should work:

Code:

tar cvf mytarfile.tgz { find . ! -name '*rst' }

Regards.

Hi grial

Finally got this to work

tar cvf archive.tar `find . \! -name '*rst' -type f`

Back ticks seem to achieve the command substitution I am looking for in the c-shell and I had to modify your find command by adding the type f to prevent it from returning the directories including . This isn't ideal as I can see a scenario where I may want to find non-rst files in sub directories also.

Ed