How to exclude file when using scp command recursively

Scp exclude files syntax and alternative

I don’t think so you can filter or exclude files when using scp command. However, there is a great workaround to exclude files and copy it securely using ssh. This page explains how to filter or excludes files when using scp to copy a directory recursively.

How to use rsync command to exclude files

The syntax is:
rsync -av -e ssh --exclude='*.out' /path/to/source/ user@hostB:/path/to/dest/
Where,

1. -a : Recurse into directories i.e. copy all files and subdirectories. Also, turn on archive mode and all other options (-rlptgoD)
2. -v : Verbose output
3. -e ssh : Use ssh for remote shell so everything gets encrypted
4. --exclude='*.out' : exclude files matching PATTERN e.g. *.out or *.c and so on.

Example of rsync command

In this example copy all file recursively from ~/virt/ directory but exclude all *.new files:
$ rsync -av -e ssh --exclude='*.new' ~/virt/ root@centos7:/tmp
Sample outputs:

rsync command in action

scp exclude files with extglob bash option

The rsync command will fail if the rsync not found on the remote server. In that case try the following scp command that uses bash shell pattern matching in the current directory (it won’t work with the -r option):
$ ls
Sample outputs:

centos71.log  centos71.qcow2  centos71.qcow2.new  centos71.v2.qcow2.new meta-data  user-data

Copy everything in the current directory except .new file(s):
$ shopt -s extglob
$ scp !(*.new) root@centos7:/tmp/
Sample outputs:

centos71.log                                  100% 4262     1.3MB/s   00:00    
centos71.qcow2                                100%  836MB  32.7MB/s   00:25    
meta-data                                     100%   47    18.5KB/s   00:00    
user-data                                     100% 1543   569.7KB/s   00:00

Understanding extglob shell option to exclude files with scp and rsync

If the extglob bash shell option is enabled using the shopt command (builtin), several extended pattern matching operators are recognized by the Linux system as follows:

Conclusion

This page showed you how to exclude files when copying files between hosts on a network under Linux or Unix-like operating systems. Pretty useful to filter out files when using the scp command/rsync command to copy directory recursively. See the following man pages for more information:
$ man 1 rsync
$ man bash
$ man 1 scp