7zip: How to exclude files (not file types) using an exclude list file?

Question

I know you can create a text file containing a list of files and then tell 7zip to reference this file so that it can exclude them from the archive, but I cannot find the syntax for that. Can someone help?

Answer 1

I think you want the -x switch with @

7z a -t7z my.zip * -x@myexclusion.lst

In retrospect, I realized you may have meant you wanted the syntax for the listfile. It should be a newline separated list. You may be running into an encoding issue. 7z expects it to be in UTF-8 format, you can override that with the -scs switch or you can tell notepad to save the file in UTF-8 format

Answer 2

After a few hours of searching, I finally figured it out. Here's the switch syntax:

7z a -xr@exclude.txt backup.7z c:\whatever\*

Notice -xr instead of -x. The r indicates recursive so it can match excluded files in deep folder hierarchies. Also, the format of the text file can be at least ANSI or UTF-8.

As for the file containing the files, as OldWolf said, it's a list separated by carriage returns like this:

Telerik.Reporting.dll
Telerik.Reporting.Service.dll
Telerik.ReportViewer.WebForms.dll
Telerik.Web.Design.dll
Telerik.Web.UI.dll
*.txt

Works like a charm.