How to use Rsync to copy only specific subdirectories (same names in several directories)

Question

I have such directories structure on server 1:

• data
  • company1
    • unique_folder1
    • other_folder
    • ...
  • company2

Answer 1

If the first matching pattern excludes a directory, then all its descendants will never be traversed. When you want to include a deep directory e.g. company*/unique_folder1/** but exclude everything else *, you need to tell rsync to include all its ancestors too:

rsync -r -v --dry-run                       \
    --include='/'                           \
    --include='/company*/'                  \
    --include='/company*/unique_folder1/'   \
    --include='/company*/unique_folder1/**' \
    --exclude='*'

You can use bash’s brace expansion to save some typing. After brace expansion, the following command is exactly the same as the previous one:

rsync -r -v --dry-run --include=/{,'company*/'{,unique_folder1/{,'**'}}} --exclude='*'