Taken from http://www.ccm.ece.vt.edu/~lscharf/samd/?topic=Linux&title=Search+and+replace+in+multiple+flies Search and replace in multiple flies Keywords: Date Created: 2002-11-22 Author: Matt Learn and Luke Scharf Problem: In GNU tar, the semantics for --exclude don't work the way I expected. Explanation: * The --exclude option goes before the file list. Right: tar --exclude tmp -zcvf my.tar.gz * Wrong: tar -zcvf my.tar.gz * --exclude tmp * GNU tar does not accept wildcards or regular expressions in a --exclude clause. * The --exclude clause takes the fully qualified filename relative to the root of the archive. File or pathnames relative to the root of the system are invalid, just like wildcards. See Also: man tar