rsync - Nov 2008 - excluding a directory without stating its contents?

I need to exclude a directory at the root of the sync tree. It's big,
so it's important that both the source and destination don't waste
time stating their contents. Should I use

  --exclude /dir
or
  --exclude /dir/***

or something else?

On Tue, 2008-11-11 at 22:02 -0200, Carlos Carvalho
wrote:
> I need to exclude a directory at the root of the sync tree. It's big,
> so it's important that both the source and destination don't waste
> time stating their contents. Should I use
> 
>   --exclude /dir
> or
>   --exclude /dir/***
> 
> or something else?
I would recommend the second option as the surest, though I would quote
the asterisks from the shell just to be safe.  The first will also work
if you're recursing from the root of the tree because it short-circuits
rsync's recursion.

Matt