Excluding a list of files from tar with spaces in filenames

[Shlomi Fish]

On Thursday 04 Feb 2010 21:48:46 Baruch Siach wrote:
> Hi Dotan,
> 
> On Thu, Feb 04, 2010 at 09:12:54PM +0200, 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
> > "
> > 
> > DONT_COPY_LIST=""
> > for pattern in $DONT_COPY ; do DONT_COPY_LIST="$DONT_COPY_LIST
> > --exclude=$pattern "; done
> > tar -zcvf - * $DONT_COPY_LIST
> > 
> > 
> > Any ideas? Thanks!
> 
> How about:
> 
> rm -f /tmp/excludes
> for pattern in $DONT_COPY ; do echo ${DONT_COPY} >> /tmp/excludes; done

This loop is wrong. You're looping over $DONT_COPY and echoing it entirely 
times and again. Also may be you want «echo "$pattern"» instead of 
«echo ${pattern}».

> tar -X /tmp/excludes -zcvf - *
> 

Between the last two lines, one can maliciously temper with /tmp/excludes. 
Please use more secure names.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

> Note that this won't archive files with spaces in their file names.
> 
> baruch

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
Interview with Ben Collins-Sussman - http://shlom.in/sussman

Deletionists delete Wikipedia articles that they consider lame.
Chuck Norris deletes deletionists whom he considers lame.

Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .