Linux Unzip with exclusions from .txt file

Question

I have an unzipping script on Linux.

It attempts to unzip with the command:

unzip file.zip

This is obviously successful.

I now wish to exclude some files. The manual tells me of the -x option. I used that and it works also, but only for a single specified folder or file.

A method often used to exclude specific files from zipping programs is to pass in a .txt file with a single exclusion pattern per line.

Is this possible with Linux Unzip?

I have tried:

unzip file.zip -x excl_file.txt
unzip file.zip -x@excl_file.txt
unzip file.zip -x "excl_file.txt"

None of these seem to be the appropriate syntax.

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 24 '14 at 13:58

2

You can't pass a file containing list of exclusions to unzip, you rather pass multiple arguments to -x. You could use command substitution to pass the list as an argument to the -x option for unzip:

unzip file.zip -x $(<excl_file.txt)

answered Mar 24 '14 at 13:58

devnull

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Surely you must mean `$( – kojiro Mar 24 '14 at 14:01
@kojiro Indeed, the file isn't to be executed! Thanks. – devnull Mar 24 '14 at 14:02
I am not very familiar with command substitution, do you mean $( – Mar 24 '14 at 14:06
@Tom `$( – devnull Mar 24 '14 at 14:09

Linux Unzip with exclusions from .txt file

1 Answers1