tar help

[Tim Howell]

Hello experts! I would like to use tar to create an archive of files in a directory EXCLUDING files with certain "extensions" like *.o and *.x
The problem with listing what I want is there are a host of other files extensions that may change over time.
I must use tar, so does anyone know any good tricks?

[Patrick Wallek]

I would create the file list dynamically and exclude the files you don't want.

Something like this:

# ls -1 | grep -v -e "*.o" -e "*.x" > file_list

# tar -cvf filename.tar $(cat file_list)

[Cheryl Griffin]

How about using the script Steven provided here
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/parseCurl.do?CURL=%2Fcm%2FQuestionAnswer%2F1%2C%2C0x4d7850011d20d6118ff40090279cd0f9%2C00.html&forumId=2&admit=716493758+1077718189425+28353475

the tar.exclude would contain
*.o
*.x

There were a lot of good answers in that thread.

[Geoff Wild]

What about creating a list of files you want to back up?

LOGFILE=/tmp/backup.log
TARFILE=`date |awk '{print ($1)}'`.tar

tar -cvf /home/backups/$TARFILE `cat /root/backupfiles` >>$LOGFILE 2>&1

Rgds...Geoff

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

Cheryl, Steven's script has the potential danger of hitting the dreaded argument list to big error.
And his grep has the potential danger of misinterpreting files that have wildcards and/or whitespace in their names, which - now we have samba and CiFS - happens far too often when users give phony names to the (edited to comply with ITRC guidelines) stuf they save on our precious shares

GNU tar is the solution

Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn

[Ravi_8]

Hi,

gnu tar might be having this option

[Cheryl Griffin]

Thank you Procura, I will keep that in mind.


(0 points please)