tar/gzip excluding certain files

Question

I have a directory with many sub-directories. In some of those sub-directories I have files with *.asc extension and some with *.xdr.

I want to create a SINGLE tarball/gzip file which maintains the directory structure but excludes all files with the *.xdr extension.

How can I do this?

I did something like find . -depth -name *.asc -exec gzip -r9 {} + but this gzips every *.asc file individually which is not what I want to do.

score 53 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 01 '13 at 15:51

53

You need to use the --exclude option:

tar -zc -f test.tar.gz --exclude='*.xdr' *

answered Aug 01 '13 at 15:51

Allolex

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What is the syntax for multiple files? I tried *.xdr,*.pdf but failed – Jack Jan 20 '16 at 09:48
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I did it by adding --exclude again. `--exclude='*.pdf' --exclude='*.mp4'` – Jack Jan 20 '16 at 09:56

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 25 '19 at 17:00

1

gzip will always handle files individually. If you want a bundled archive you will have to tar the files first and then gzip the result, hence you will end up with a .tar.gz file or .tgz for short.

To get a better control over what you are doing, you can first find the files using the command you already posted (with -print instead of the gzip command) and put them into a file, then use this file (=filelist.txt) to instruct tar with what to archive

tar -T filelist.txt -c -v -f myarchive.tar

edited Mar 25 '19 at 17:00

Lily Yung

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answered Aug 01 '13 at 15:42

Carsten Massmann

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That's fine. How can I do it with tar? – user1654183 Aug 01 '13 at 15:42
I guess something like this will work: tar -cf src.tar --exclude='*.xdr' src – user1654183 Aug 01 '13 at 15:44

tar/gzip excluding certain files

2 Answers2