Include and exclude files that contain wildcard characters

You must use special escape characters when including or excluding files and directories that contain wildcard characters.

The backup-archive client treats wildcard characters in different ways on different platforms.

The names of directories and files can contain different symbols. The types of symbols that are allowed depend on the operating system.

AIX operating systemsLinux operating systemsMac OS X operating systemsOracle Solaris operating systemsFor example, on AIX®, the names of directories or files can contain:
  * ? : [ ]
Windows operating systemsFor example, on Windows, the names of directories and files should not contain the following symbols:
  ? * < > " / \ : |
Windows operating systemsHowever, they can contain the following symbols:
  [ ]

To specify files and directories in include and exclude statements, you must use the escape character "\" to specify the wildcards. However, the escape character can only be used inside the character classes "[]".

The following examples illustrate how to specify files and directories that contain wildcard characters using the escape character and character classes in include-exclude statements.

AIX operating systemsLinux operating systemsMac OS X operating systemsOracle Solaris operating systemsTo exclude the single directory /usr1/[dir2] from backup processing, enter the following in the dsm.sys file or the include-exclude file:
  exclude.dir "/usr1/[\[]dir2[\]]"
AIX operating systemsLinux operating systemsMac OS X operating systemsOracle Solaris operating systemsTo exclude the single file /usr1/fi*le1 from backup processing, enter the following statement in the dsm.sys file or the include-exclude file:
  exclude "/usr1/fi[\*]le1"
AIX operating systemsLinux operating systemsMac OS X operating systemsOracle Solaris operating systemsTip: If you use the Preferences Editor to include or exclude a single file or directory that contains wildcard characters, you must manually edit the include or exclude statement to escape the wildcard characters. The Preferences Editor does not automatically escape the wildcard characters. Follow the previous examples to edit the include or exclude statements in the dsm.sys file or the include-exclude file.
Windows operating systemsTo exclude the single directory C:\[dir2] from backup processing, enter the following in the dsm.opt file:
  exclude.dir "C:\[\[]dir2[\]]"
Windows operating systemsTo exclude the single file C:\file[.txt from backup processing, enter the following in the dsm.opt file:
  exclude.dir "C:\file[\[].txt"
Windows operating systemsTip: If you use the Preferences Editor to include or exclude a single file or directory that contains wildcard characters, you must manually edit the include or exclude statement to escape the wildcard characters. The Preferences Editor does not automatically escape the wildcard characters. Follow the previous examples to edit the include or exclude statements in the dsm.opt file or the include-exclude file.