Wrapping exclude option in an rsync NSTask method

I am trying to wrap rsync in NSTask and use the exclude option to not sync hidden files (dot files). I know this works at the command line:

rsync -az --exclude='.*' source destination

My NSTask is defined as follows:

NSTask *开发者_运维知识库rsyncTask;
rsyncTask = [[NSTask alloc] init];
[rsyncTask setLaunchPath: @"/usr/bin/rsync"];

NSArray *arguments;
arguments = [NSArray arrayWithObjects: @"-az", @"--exclude='.*'", source, destination, nil];
[rsyncTask setArguments: arguments];

Without the exclude argument things work fine. In fact things work fine with the above definition but hidden files are still copied.

I have tried:

• escaping the single ticks with a backslash
• using escaped double quotes
• using two backslashes to escape the escaping backslash
• not using --exclude= but just --exclude with a separate array element that is @"'.*'"

Nothing seems to get the results I want.

Any suggestions welcome.

For anyone who comes across this looking for how to exclude multiple files, it turns out you need a separate --exclude for each file/directory you wish to exclude. On the command line the --exclude={file1,dir1/dir2,file2,dir1/dir\ with\ spaces} pattern works, but that format does not play nice with NSTask. For NSTask (swift) this would be:

task.arguments = ["-FLAGS", "--exclude", "file1", "--exclude", "dir1/dir2", "--exclude", "file2", "--exclude", "dir1/dir with spaces", "SRC", "DST"]

Also note that NSTask does not require spaces to be escaped. From the docs, "The NSTask object converts both path and the strings in arguments to appropriate C-style strings (using fileSystemRepresentation) before passing them to the task via argv[]) . The strings in arguments do not undergo shell expansion, so you do not need to do special quoting, and shell variables, such as $PWD, are not resolved."

Try using just --exclude with a separate argument that is @".*" (without single quotes).

Since you are passing arguments directly to the task, you don't need to quote or escape things like you would at a command line. That's because at the command line, the shell is parsing what you type, but in this case there is no shell.