Running the tar command with the –exclude functionality does not work for directories

tar

I use

tar hczf t.tar.gz * --exclude="./test1"

where test1 is the name of a directory that I want to prevent from being tarred.

Unfortunately, tar still includes the directory test1. How can I have tar exclude directories?

So it turns out that to prevent the tarring of a directory you need to change where you're adding the --exclude

tar --exclude="./test1" -hczf t.tar.gz *

works

tar -C changes directory

tar -C /home/user1/ -cvzf dir1.tar.gz dir1

btw, handy one for keeping track of changing directories... use pushd and popd.

pushd .
cd /home/user1
tar cvfz dir1.tar.gz
popd

so, lets back up the directory /directory and everything in it, but ignoring any files called IGNORE-ME.

tar -cf backup.tar /directory --exclude "IGNORE-ME"

If it wasn't snowing out, i'd probably point out that man tar is as good as RTFM (and google 'tar exclude file' is even faster).