how to use the -ax switch in 7z command?

Question

I want to use the 7z command to compress some of files, but I want it to exclude some of the files. I tried the -ai, -ax, and -i switches, but no one seems to work. I need the compressed archive keep the directories, so I cannot use the find command to list the files I need and pass them to xargs.

Answer 1

I think you want to use the -x switch.

An example from the documentation:

7z a -tzip archive.zip '*.txt' '-x!temp.*'

would archive all .txt files but exclude temp.* files.

Note that on Linux, file specifications should be quoted so 7zip can expand them instead of letting the shell do it.