Sources_and_Exclusions.md

List sources and exclusions

Let's assume you have the following folder structure:

C:\data\
    ├── important\
    │   ├── docs\
    │   │   ├── .exclude\
    │   │   ├── file5.tmp
    │   │   └── file6.tmp
    │   ├── .exclude\
    │   ├── file1.txt
    │   └── file2.txt
    └── temp\
        ├── .exclude\
        ├── file3.tmp
        └── file4.tmp

Caution

All paths must be absolute, e.g.:

C:\folder
C:\folder\file1.txt
\\folder
\\folder\file1.txt

List file source.txt

1. File format:

In the file, you can specify paths to files and folders that you want to archive, and also add comments, starting the line with #. Each path must be on a separate line. For example:

C:\data\important\file1.txt
C:\data\important\file2.txt
# this line is ignored by 7-Zip
C:\data\important\docs\

Note

If the path contains spaces, it must be enclosed in quotation marks:

"C:\path with spaces\file1.txt"

2. Templates:

You can use wildcards (* and ?) to specify file groups:

• * - matches any number of characters (including zero).

   `C:\path\to\*.txt` includes all files with the extension `.txt` in the specified folder.

• ? - matches any single character.

   `C:\path\to\file?.txt` matches `file1.txt`, `file2.txt`, but not `file10.txt`.

You can use ** to recursively search for files in all subdirectories.

   `C:\path\to\**\*.jpg` includes all `.jpg` files in the specified folder and all its subdirectories.

exclude.txt

To exclude individual files or folders that you do not want to save in the backup, use the exclude.txt file.

Examples of exceptions:

1. Single file exclusion:

   C:\data\important\file1.txt

2. Exclude all files of a certain type:

   C:\data\temp\*.tmp

3. Exclude a specific folder:

   C:\data\temp\

4. Exclude all folders of a specific name:

   *.exclude\*

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Example of use

If you want to archive the entire data folder, excluding the temp folder, all .tmp files in all folders, as well as the .exclude folders, for this:

• Add a line to the source.txt file

  C:\data\
  

• Add lines to the exclude.txt file

  C:\data\temp\ # excludes temp folder
  *.tmp # excludes all files with the .tmp extension in all folders
  *.exclude\* # excludes all folders named .exclude and their contents in all folders
  

As a result, the following structure will be preserved:

C:\data\important\
        ├── docs\
        │   ├── file5.tmp
        │   └── file6.tmp
        ├── file1.txt
        └── file2.txt

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