Excluding a list of files from tar with spaces in filenames

[Dotan Cohen]

On 4 February 2010 21:43, Shlomi Fish <shlomif at iglu.org.il> wrote:
> On Thursday 04 Feb 2010 21:12:54 Dotan Cohen wrote:
>> I hope there is a bash guru out there today. I need to script a backup
>> plan which has a list of directories that should not be backed up.
>> Some of these directories have spaces in their filenames. The
>> following script works so long as there are no directories with spaces
>> in DONT_COPY, however, I cannot figure out what to do to get it to
>> work _with_ spaces in filenames:
>>
>> #!/bin/bash
>>
>> DONT_COPY="
>> .adobe/
>> File with Spaces
>> .bin/google-earth
>> Yet Another Annoying Filename
>> "
>
> Use a bash array/list/whatever-it's-called:
>
> DONT_COPY=(.adobe/ "File With Spaces" .bin/google-earth "Yet Another Annoying
> Filename")
>

For readability (and thus maintainability) I prefer one entry per line.


>>
>> DONT_COPY_LIST=""
>> for pattern in $DONT_COPY ; do DONT_COPY_LIST="$DONT_COPY_LIST
>> --exclude=$pattern "; done
>
> Here you should do:
>
> <<<
> DONT_COPY_LIST+="--exclude='$pattern' "
>>>>
>

Thanks.


> You can also use Perl/Python/Ruby/etc. which are more robust for such stuff.
>

I though about Python, but with other tools in the script it is in
fact better off in Bash. This is just a small part of it.

-- 
Dotan Cohen

http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il

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