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til/unix/exclude-certain-files-from-an-rsync-run.md

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# Exclude Certain Files From An rsync Run
The `rsync` command can be used to copy files from one directory to another (as
well as to or from a remote system). It is generally used to broadly
synchronize all files in the source directory to a destination directory.
I recently ran into a situation where I wanted to recursively (`-a`) sync files
from a cloned git repository. I didn't want quite everything—namely dotfiles,
dot-directories (such as `.git/`), and top-level markdown files.
This is where the `--exclude` flag comes in to play.
The dotfiles and dot-directories can be excluded with the `.*` pattern.
```bash
$ rsync -anv --exclude='.*' dir1/ dir2
```
The top-level markdown files can be excluded, without excluding nested markdown
files, with the `./*.md` pattern.
```bash
$ rsync -anv --exclude='.*' --exclude='./.*md' dir1/ dir2
```
The `-n` and `-v` flags together provide a dry run of this with results that I
can check. Once I'm ready to do the real thing, I can remove those.
```bash
$ rsync -a --exclude='.*' --exclude='./.*md' dir1/ dir2
```
See `man rsync` for more details.