Exclude everything starting with dot in lftp mirror command [closed]

Question

I'm using LFTP to mirror some Git files to my server from a Docker image using a CI/CD pipeline vendor. This works as expected but when using the mirror command from LFTP, I need to exclude any kind of file starting with a dot, like so:

lftp -u $USERNAME, -e "[...] mirror [...] --ignore-time -x '/(\.\w*.*)/$' --exclude README.md [...]; exit" sftp://$HOST

But none of those are working, it just jumps out that -x command and goes for the next one (e.g. --exclude README.md).

I guess is not about using -x or --exclude since, from the docs:

mirror [OPTS] [source [target]]

[...]

-x RX, --exclude=RX exclude matching files

This ones didn't work either:

-x '/(\.\w*.*)/$'

-x /(\.\w*.*)/$

-x /(\.\w*.*)/

-x (\.\w*.*)

-x \.\w*.*

What is wrong then? Isn't that a valid regex for Bash?

Answer 1

For some reason the only way that worked for me is to use $ at the end of the --exclude regex, like so:

lftp -u $USERNAME, -e "[...] mirror [...] --exclude '^\..*$'[...]

Without the end-of-line delimiter it seems to not work at all, just ignores that --exclude or -x option and goes for the next one . Also, the regex must be wrapped in quotation marks (single or double).

Hope this helps someone :)