Using Regular Expressions (regex)

Leverage the power of regular expressions to fine-tune your backup file exclusion rules. The following are some common regex examples. Please refer to the references below for detailed instructions.

.*\.mp3

This pattern means any character (the dot) for any number of times (the star) ending with ”.mp3”. The dot in mp3 is escaped with a backslash.

Case-insensitive:

(?i).*\.mp3

Any pattern beginning with (?i) indicates a case-insensitive search so this example will match both .mp3 and .MP3.

.*/IMAP.*

As above, any characters until a directory starting with IMAP followed by any characters. Note that CrashPlan treats all file separators as forward slashes (/).

There are many fantastic regex resources on the Internet. Here are a few of our favorites:

• Regular-Expressions.info
• Java Regex Lesson
• Java Pattern API

If you need help with your regular expressions, you might also try asking for help from other users in our User Forums.