7-zip - how to use command line to include/exclude large list of files

Question

I'm (trying) to develop a program to operate the 7-zip console program (7z.exe) via ShellExecute() and passing it a computer-generated list of files.

Now what I want to do is this :

I want to pass it a command line telling it to include and exclude files : i.e

include these :
c:\path\path2\path
c:\path\path2\path__\
.... more files

exclude these :
c:\path\path2\path\data\files\foo\bar\fish.dat
c:\path\path2\path__\data\slug.mp3
.... more files

so I make a command line like this :

7z a -t7z -i!"...file to include" -x!"file to exclude" ... etc etc

I'm just repeating from memory so I know the command line might not be accurate

But what I enter doesn't work. I just get everything in path and path__. What I want is an archive that looks like this inside:

.\
path\
     data\
          files\
                foo\
                    bar\
                        <everything in path\data\files\foo\bar except for foo.dat>
path__\
       data\
            <everything in path__\data\ except for slug.mp3>

Could I have some help on getting this result? Thanks

Answer 1

Without knowing your exact 7z-command it is just guessing but here it goes:

7z a -t7z -ir@"files_to_include.txt" -xr@"files_to_exclude.txt" ....

Note the r after -i and -x for recursive. You also probably used @ before the filename instead of the !. (or at least you should. ! is used for specifying wildcard at the command line :)

Then for your files_to_exclude.txt content. I believe you should use relative paths here. So don't specify the c:\.... before your paths. If your common paths in the include is c:\path\path2 you need to delete this from the exclude. The reason for this is that while 7z is compressing your files it already did away with the c:\path\path2-part (because not the entire path is stored, only the relative part). So your excludes don't match anymore. You can see this because when opening the .zip c:\path\path2 is not in the .zip. (So matching it does not work)

So your files_to_exclude.txt should look like this:

path\data\files\foo\bar\fish.dat
path__\data\slug.mp3
.... more files

So if after adding the r after -i and -x and changing the new files_to_exclude.txt you still have troubles we need to see your actual command.