How to sync only top level directories?

[feklee (Felix E. Klee)]

This does not work as it also includes the contents of the top level directories:

!/*
*

I don’t want the content of the top level directories. (except where I cherry pick it)

[tomasz86 (Tomasz Wilczyński)]

In your patterns, !/* unignores everything, so the following * does basically nothing.

You need something like this:

/*/

[feklee (Felix E. Klee)]

@tomasz86

In your patterns, !/* unignores everything

This I don’t understand. According to the documentation:

• Asterisk (*) matches zero or more characters in a filename, but does not match the directory separator. te*ne matches telephone, subdir/telephone but not tele/phone.

• A pattern beginning with / matches in the root of the synced folder only. /foo matches foo but not subdir/foo.

Therefore, I would expect /* to match only top level files and directories. If I were to use * or /**, I would expect these to match everything.

You need something like this:

/*/

For syncing only top level files and directories, do you suggest .stignore to be as follows?

!/*/
*

Maybe important to note: I am using Syncthing-Fork on Android.

[tomasz86 (Tomasz Wilczyński)]

@feklee

For syncing only top level files and directories, do you suggest .stignore to be as follows?

!/*/
*

No, you need just /*/ and nothing else. This will sync only the contents of the folder root, including files and folders, but will ignore everything inside the folders.

@feklee

I would expect /* to match only top level files and directories. If I were to use * or /**, I would expect these to match everything.

In this case, all of these are basically the same. This is because once you ignore a folder, then everything inside it also gets ignored.

[feklee (Felix E. Klee)]

@tomasz86

No, you need just /*/ and nothing else. This will sync only the contents of the folder root, including files and folders, but will ignore everything inside the folders.

Thank you, but I don’t understand it. The documentation states:

Please note that directory patterns ending with a slash some/directory/ matches the content of the directory, but not the directory itself.

Say, if I have:

/a
/a/foo.txt
/a/bar.txt
/b
/b/foo.txt
/c
/foo.txt

Then I would expect /*/ to match:

• The contents of /a:

  /a/foo.txt
  /a/bar.txt
  

• The contents of /b:

  /b/foo.txt
  

But not /c and not /foo.txt. According to my understanding, what gets synced would be:

/a/foo.txt
/a/bar.txt
/b/foo.txt

This is not what I want. Instead I want to sync only the first level files and directories:

/a
/b
/c
/foo.txt

[feklee (Felix E. Klee)]

Which brings me back to this, i.e. the inverse:

@feklee

!/*/
*

But you said, this it not needed.

[tomasz86 (Tomasz Wilczyński)]

@feklee

This is not what I want. Instead I want to sync only the first level files and directories:

/a
/b
/c
/foo.txt

Honestly, I’m not really sure where the confusion is coming from, but using /*/ will get you precisely the above. On the other hand, your inverted patterns will do exactly the opposite (i.e. sync everything inside the folders, but ignore the folders themselves, and everything else in the root path).

At this point, I would suggest simply experimenting with different patterns using a temporary folder (e.g. share a dummy folder between two devices, add ignore patterns to it on one side, add some files and see what syncs; if you’re not satisfied, delete everything and start from scratch).

[feklee (Felix E. Klee)]

@tomasz86

Honestly, I’m not really sure where the confusion is coming from

It comes from me confusing including and excluding, LOL.

Thanks again, all works fine.