## Linux Tar Zip Exclude Directory

_December 21st 2020_

Sometimes it’s nice if you are tar zipping a directory (let’s say for a backup) and want to exclude a directory. For instance, if you are backing up a project and want to exclude the images directory (for size) or exclude the `build` or `dist` directory you can run the linux `tar` command with the `--exclude` option. However there are some quirks with using `--exclude`:

1. The `--exclude` flag must come before the source directory  
2. Some linux distributions allow for `--exclude /path/to/excluded/` and some require `=` such as `--exclude="/path/to/excluded"`. From my experience all of the distributions allow the `=` version.  
3. The other flags such as: `-czf` must come directly after the `tar` command such as: `tar -czf`  
4. The excluded directory does not have the trailing backslash such as: `--exclude="./wp-content/uploads"`

Here is a full example excluding the `uploads` folder in a WordPress installation:

```
tar -czf backup.tgz --exclude="/var/www/wordpress/wp-content/uploads" /var/www/wordpress/wp-content/
```