.\" Man page generated from reStructuredText. . .TH BORG-PATTERNS 1 "2017-02-11" "" "borg backup tool" .SH NAME borg-patterns \- Details regarding patterns . .nr rst2man-indent-level 0 . .de1 rstReportMargin \\$1 \\n[an-margin] level \\n[rst2man-indent-level] level margin: \\n[rst2man-indent\\n[rst2man-indent-level]] - \\n[rst2man-indent0] \\n[rst2man-indent1] \\n[rst2man-indent2] .. .de1 INDENT .\" .rstReportMargin pre: . RS \\$1 . nr rst2man-indent\\n[rst2man-indent-level] \\n[an-margin] . nr rst2man-indent-level +1 .\" .rstReportMargin post: .. .de UNINDENT . RE .\" indent \\n[an-margin] .\" old: \\n[rst2man-indent\\n[rst2man-indent-level]] .nr rst2man-indent-level -1 .\" new: \\n[rst2man-indent\\n[rst2man-indent-level]] .in \\n[rst2man-indent\\n[rst2man-indent-level]]u .. .SH DESCRIPTION .sp Exclusion patterns support four separate styles, fnmatch, shell, regular expressions and path prefixes. By default, fnmatch is used. If followed by a colon (\(aq:\(aq) the first two characters of a pattern are used as a style selector. Explicit style selection is necessary when a non\-default style is desired or when the desired pattern starts with two alphanumeric characters followed by a colon (i.e. \fIaa:something/*\fP). .sp \fI\%Fnmatch\fP, selector \fIfm:\fP .INDENT 0.0 .INDENT 3.5 This is the default style. These patterns use a variant of shell pattern syntax, with \(aq*\(aq matching any number of characters, \(aq?\(aq matching any single character, \(aq[...]\(aq matching any single character specified, including ranges, and \(aq[!...]\(aq matching any character not specified. For the purpose of these patterns, the path separator (\(aq\(aq for Windows and \(aq/\(aq on other systems) is not treated specially. Wrap meta\-characters in brackets for a literal match (i.e. \fI[?]\fP to match the literal character \fI?\fP). For a path to match a pattern, it must completely match from start to end, or must match from the start to just before a path separator. Except for the root path, paths will never end in the path separator when matching is attempted. Thus, if a given pattern ends in a path separator, a \(aq*\(aq is appended before matching is attempted. .UNINDENT .UNINDENT .sp Shell\-style patterns, selector \fIsh:\fP .INDENT 0.0 .INDENT 3.5 Like fnmatch patterns these are similar to shell patterns. The difference is that the pattern may include \fI**/\fP for matching zero or more directory levels, \fI*\fP for matching zero or more arbitrary characters with the exception of any path separator. .UNINDENT .UNINDENT .sp Regular expressions, selector \fIre:\fP .INDENT 0.0 .INDENT 3.5 Regular expressions similar to those found in Perl are supported. Unlike shell patterns regular expressions are not required to match the complete path and any substring match is sufficient. It is strongly recommended to anchor patterns to the start (\(aq^\(aq), to the end (\(aq$\(aq) or both. Path separators (\(aq\(aq for Windows and \(aq/\(aq on other systems) in paths are always normalized to a forward slash (\(aq/\(aq) before applying a pattern. The regular expression syntax is described in the \fI\%Python documentation for the re module\fP\&. .UNINDENT .UNINDENT .sp Prefix path, selector \fIpp:\fP .INDENT 0.0 .INDENT 3.5 This pattern style is useful to match whole sub\-directories. The pattern \fIpp:/data/bar\fP matches \fI/data/bar\fP and everything therein. .UNINDENT .UNINDENT .sp Exclusions can be passed via the command line option \fI\-\-exclude\fP\&. When used from within a shell the patterns should be quoted to protect them from expansion. .sp The \fI\-\-exclude\-from\fP option permits loading exclusion patterns from a text file with one pattern per line. Lines empty or starting with the number sign (\(aq#\(aq) after removing whitespace on both ends are ignored. The optional style selector prefix is also supported for patterns loaded from a file. Due to whitespace removal paths with whitespace at the beginning or end can only be excluded using regular expressions. .sp Examples: .INDENT 0.0 .INDENT 3.5 .sp .nf .ft C # Exclude \(aq/home/user/file.o\(aq but not \(aq/home/user/file.odt\(aq: $ borg create \-e \(aq*.o\(aq backup / # Exclude \(aq/home/user/junk\(aq and \(aq/home/user/subdir/junk\(aq but # not \(aq/home/user/importantjunk\(aq or \(aq/etc/junk\(aq: $ borg create \-e \(aq/home/*/junk\(aq backup / # Exclude the contents of \(aq/home/user/cache\(aq but not the directory itself: $ borg create \-e /home/user/cache/ backup / # The file \(aq/home/user/cache/important\(aq is *not* backed up: $ borg create \-e /home/user/cache/ backup / /home/user/cache/important # The contents of directories in \(aq/home\(aq are not backed up when their name # ends in \(aq.tmp\(aq $ borg create \-\-exclude \(aqre:^/home/[^/]+\e.tmp/\(aq backup / # Load exclusions from file $ cat >exclude.txt <