rsync - Feb 2006 - trailing star/double star in --exclude

Is there any difference in rsync behaviour between "--exclude /dir/*"
and "--exclude /dir/**" (one and two trailing "stars")?

Will rsync enter and scan content of dir/ (and thus change access time
of files and directories) in any of these examples?

Here in list rsync users show both variants in their examples, on
practice I see no difference, but maybe there is a recommended (i.e.
more "ideologically" correct) one?

With the best regards,
Denis Solovyov

On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 12:45:23AM +0800, Denis Solovyov
wrote:
> Is there any difference in rsync behaviour between "--exclude
/dir/*"
> and "--exclude /dir/**" (one and two trailing "stars")?
They are usually the same due to how "/dir/*" is enough to stop rsync
from ever getting down to any subdirs inside "dir".  The only
exception
is when an include preceded it that keeps a subdir of "dir", like
this:

+ /dir/subdir/
- /dir/**

Which is shorter than:

+ /dir/subdir/
- /dir/subdir/*
- /dir/*

Also, on the daemon side, it is safer to use "**" in excludes for the
modules in rsyncd.conf (which hides files from the user) to make sure
that the user can't start a transfer from deeper inside the hierarchy
than the exclude matches.

When using an anchored match term, a "**" at the end of the string
makes
almost no difference in terms of code efficiency.  In other cases it is
usually slightly more efficient to use "*" in places where you
don't
really need to use "**" (such as using "- *" instead of
"- **").
> Will rsync enter and scan content of dir/ (and thus change access time
> of files and directories) in any of these examples?
Nope.

..wayne..