How to tar all files except select few

[Madhu Sudhan_1]

Hello,
I remember reading this and also have used it once or twice. Iam unable to recollect now. Could anyone please let me know, how to tar all files except a, b, c, d, e and f

Thanks,
Madhu

[Chris Wilshaw]

With the standard tar command, you have to supply the files as a list. If you don't want to do this directly on the command line, you can use something like

tar -cvf /tmp/files.tar `cat /tmp/file_list.txt`

where /tmp/file_list.txt contains the files you want (including the full path)

eg

/etc/passwd
/etc/hosts
/var/adm/syslog
...
...

[Stefan Farrelly]

You need to firstly create you tar file with 1 file in;

tar cvf

Then use find to find the files/dirs you want, but use the negate -name (! -name ) to exclude those you dont want, eg;

cd /tmp
find . ! -name ! -name -exec tar rvf {} \;

This will append all files in /tmp except file1 and file2 to your tarfile

[Thierry Poels_1]

Hi,

if you have not a zillion files in your directory, and do not want to exclude a zillion files:

tar cvf tarfile `ls | grep -v -e "^file1$" -e "^file2$" `

regards,
Thierry.

[Bernhard Mueller]

Madhu,

if a, b, c, etc just mean subdirs or files in the current directory it would be as easy as:

tar cvf /bigdir/tarfile `ls | grep -v -E "a|b|c|d|e|f"`


else it should be something like:

tar cvf /bigdir/tarfile `find . -xdev -type f | grep -v -E "a|b|c|d|e|f"`

Regards
Bernhard

[T G Manikandan]

you can do something like this

#ls|egrep -v 'a|b|c' >/tmp/a/z;tar cvf a.tar `cat /tmp/a/z`

The best option would be 'find' instead of a 'ls'

[Graham Cameron_1]

Basically, tar accepts a file mask or masks, so if you can construct a mask for what you want, (and what you don't want), you can do it.

In this case.

tar cvf tarfile a?* b?* c?* d?* e?* f?* [0-9g-z]*

will get them, unless you have wierd filenames beginning with non-alphanumerics.

-- Graham

[Madhu Sudhan_1]

Graham, you are almost there.

I remember using ![#filename] ( or in some combination) of ! [] #, where filename is name of the file that has to be excluded in the tar.

Unable to get the right combination now.

Thanks,
Madhu

[G. Vrijhoeven]

Hi,

find . !-name | tar cvf file.tar -

Gideon

[Graham Cameron_1]

Ah

That would be
tar cvf tarfile !(a|b|c|d|e|f)

--Graham

[Madhu Sudhan_1]

Doesn't seem to work. See this.
$ tar cvf ../all.tar !(d.txt | e.txt)
a a.txt 0 blocks
a b.txt 0 blocks
a c.txt 0 blocks
a d.txt 0 blocks
a e.txt 0 blocks
$ tar tvf ../all.tar
rw-r--r-- 47354/20 0 Nov 19 05:11 2003 a.txt
rw-r--r-- 47354/20 0 Nov 19 05:11 2003 b.txt
rw-r--r-- 47354/20 0 Nov 19 05:11 2003 c.txt
rw-r--r-- 47354/20 0 Nov 19 05:11 2003 d.txt
rw-r--r-- 47354/20 0 Nov 19 05:11 2003 e.txt
$

-Madhu

[Graham Cameron_1 · Accepted solution]

Madhu

It doesn't like the spaces.

tar cvf ../all.tar !(d.txt|e.txt)

-- Graham

[Madhu Sudhan_1]

:) Amazing. Thanks Graham. You get 10.

-Madhu