Recursion Roots & include\exclude items

[cyb3rz3us]

Hello all - new to BorgBackup and struggling a little with patterns and specifically, pattern files. I've read the patterns help file as well as a few other posts on GitHub but nothing seems to cover the questions I have below. Apologies in advance for my noob-ness and if I missed something obvious.

It seems clear that the Recursion Roots in the pattern file are the same items that are specified at the end of the borg create command. With that in mind, my initial thought was the RRs would act as a base from which all other patterns could be built but it appears this is incorrect.

For example, let's say I have:

borgtest
├── docs
├── games
├── mags
└── pics

And then let's say I want to back up everything contained in borgtest except the contents of games. I initially tried the following pattern set:

R borgtest
- games

The above did not work. To achieve my goal, I had to add the RR path to the exclusion item as follows:

R borgtest
- borgtest/games

This seems to indicate that the path for inclusion\exclusion items must be entered at least twice: (a) as the Recursion Root; (b) as part of the actual include\exclude statement. I doubt Borg would demand this redundancy so I'm likely missing something here.

I also thought to try the Path Prefix pattern but this too did not work as I expected. A couple of examples on the use of PPs would be helpful.

Thanks in advance for your help on improving my understanding of a truly awesome piece of software.

[cyb3rz3us]

OK - did some more digging here and to achieve my goal, it looks like I need to use regex patterns. Going back to the example I used in the OP, if I use this pattern file:

R borgtest
- re:games

Then all content in borgtest except games is backed up.

However, I realize that in a real-world setting, there might be more than one location that would match the re: pattern and that maybe some should be backed up and others excluded. So, with this in mind, a couple of questions:

• Is this the proper and expected use of re: type patterns?
• Can the same goal be achieved using fm:, sh:, or even pp: type patterns?