All commands tested on Mac OS Monterey / Jul 02, 2024
How to create a tar archive excluding a directory
Create a tar archive called directory.tar of directory/ excluding the directory/backups/ directory.
You can use this short tar command.
tar --exclude directory/backups/ -cvf directory.tar directory/
Or this more verbose tar command.
tar --exclude directory/backups/ --create --verbose --file directory.tar directory/
Options explained
--excludetells tar not to process files or directories that match the specified pattern-cor--createtells tar to create a new archivevor--verbosetells tar to produce verbose outputfor--filetells tar that the next parameter will be the tar file to create, extract, append to, list, etc.
More commands for creating tar archives
- Create a tar archive of a directory
- Create a tar archive of multiple directories
- Create a tar archive without the hidden files
- Create a tar archive of files by filetype
- Create a tar archive of files by multiple filetypes
- Create a tar archive excluding multiple directories
- Create a tar archive of a directory excluding files of a specific filetype
- Create a tar archive of a directory excluding files by multiple filetypes
- Create a tar archive without the parent directory
