How to filter out a directory?

Help and Support
1

Hi,

I am trying to include “config.xml” in all directories, exclude for the “backups” root-level directory. I tried invoking:

rclone sync --dump-filters --filter “- backups/**” --filter “+ config.xml” source target

and got the following output:

— start filters —
— File filter rules —

  • ^backups/.*$
  • (^|/)config.xml$
    — Directory filter rules —
  • ^backups/.*$
  • ^.*$
    — end filters —

The problem is that this is including non-config.xml files in the root directory. I think “+ ^.*$” is at fault. How do I filter that out?

Thanks,
Gili

2

I figured it out.

According to https://rclone.org/filtering/#how-the-rules-are-used each filter is matched in order, from top to bottom, against the list of filters. So I had to moved the exclusion filters around to get the desired behavior:

–filter “- backups/**” --filter “+ **/config.xml” --filter “- *”

That is, I always exclude “backups” even if they contain “config.xml”. I then exclude all non-config.xml files (at the end of the filter list).

Gili

3

Glad you figured it out. Note that you don’t need the **/ prefix on the config.xml as that is the default - do search everwhere for it.