Bash Wildcard and Variable Usage

Question

What I'm trying to achieve is copying everything at source directory to destination directory by excluding the workspace directory, I have the following command to do so:

rsync -av --exclude='directory-name*/workspace' sourceDir destinationDir

which is working well, but if I try to use variable for the "directory-name":

VARIABLE_NAME="directory-name"
rsync -av --exclude='$VARIABLE_NAME*/workspace' sourceDir destinationDir

Variables aren't expanded within single quotes. Neither are asterisks, but I'm not sure what you're trying to do with it. — Biffen, May 16 '16 at 09:46
See: [Difference between single and double quotes in bash](http://stackoverflow.com/q/6697753/3776858) — Cyrus, May 16 '16 at 09:56
yup that works and I'll read everything at the link, thanks a lot! — Canberk Ozcelik, May 16 '16 at 10:05

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered May 16 '16 at 09:48

3

Variables are not expanded when put inside single quotes, use double quotes instead:

rsync -av --exclude="$VARIABLE_NAME"'*/workspace' sourceDir destinationDir

answered May 16 '16 at 09:48

heemayl

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Bash Wildcard and Variable Usage

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