How do I use tar to exclude all files of a certain directory?

The usual gotcha with tar's --exclude option is that it is relative to the directory argument e.g. given

$ tree dir
dir
└── subdir
    └── subsubdir
        ├── file1
        ├── file2
        └── file3

2 directories, 3 files

then

$ tar cvf dir.tar.gz --exclude='/dir/subdir/subsubdir/*' dir
dir/
dir/subdir/
dir/subdir/subsubdir/
dir/subdir/subsubdir/file1
dir/subdir/subsubdir/file2
dir/subdir/subsubdir/file3

fails to exclude the contents of subsubdir (it's trying to exclude dir/dir/subdir/subsubdir/*, which doesn't match anything); what you want is

$ tar cvf dir.tar.gz --exclude='subdir/subsubdir/*' dir
dir/
dir/subdir/
dir/subdir/subsubdir/

AFAIK the order doesn't matter except that the output file must immediately follow the f option.

Let's say you have a directory named "top-dir" with subfolders "dir/subdir". If you want to exclude content of a directory "dir/subdir" but not the directory itself, the command line that actually works is tar -zcp --exclude='dir/subdir/*' -f archive.tgz top-dir.

You have to use the -f switch after the --exclude one and before the archive file name.

Success Case:

1. If giving full path to take backup, in exclude also should be used full path.

   tar -zcvf /opt/ABC/BKP_27032020/backup_27032020.tar.gz --exclude='/opt/ABC/csv/*' --exclude='/opt/ABC/log/*' /opt/ABC
   

2. If giving current path to take backup, in exclude also should be used current path only.

   tar -zcvf backup_27032020.tar.gz --exclude='ABC/csv/*' --exclude='ABC/log/*' ABC
   

Failure Case:

1. If giving currentpath directory to take backup and full path to ignore,then it won't work

   tar -zcvf /opt/ABC/BKP_27032020/backup_27032020.tar.gz --exclude='/opt/ABC/csv/*' --exclude='/opt/ABC/log/*' ABC
   

Note: mentioning exclude before/after backup directory is fine.