How do I use a shell command to tar a list of files and folders with exclusions

Question

Hi,

How do I tar a list of files and folders (all in the same directory) with the exclusion of a single directory (which contains a huge amount of data)

Answer 1

tar --exclude=PATTERN xvzf nameof.tar.gz ./*

PATTERN can be the directory name. GNU tar.

Answer 2

I think it may depend on your version of tar. You can use 'man tar' or 'tar --help' to check for details on your version. But the options I found are:

tar -X filename: excludes anything listed in the given text file
tar --exclude=pattern: excludes anything matching the pattern

Answer 3

Hey thanks for the superfast response!

1 quick question though - do I need to add the individual files/folders to this command that I want tar'd or can I do something like "tar --exclude=MYEXCLUDEDDIRECTORY xvzf mydirectoryiwant.tar.gz ./mydirectoryiwant/

Answer 4

actually just figured it out with your help - many thanks!