The Zone file

It is possible to have a text file in which one can specify files that SyncDiscs should ignore when carrying out a synchronisation. One can match the left hand part of a path that you want to be ignored by SyncDiscs by using a pattern such as the following:

ADFS::HardDisc4.$.xxx

It is also possible to match the right hand side of paths by putting three dots before the file name. So

...tempfile

will make any file called 'tempfile' be ignored.

The facility is made more powerful by the use of wildcards in the zone file. The character * will match any number of characters, while the character ? will match one.

Putting all this together, for example, one can ignore all compiler object files, which are normally in directories named o, with a zone file entry of

...o.*

This feature should be considered developmental, since it only works if the individual objects are actually seen by the program. If, in the above example, the secondary has no 'o' directory, and the setting 'Copy complete directories' is ticked, then the o directory will be copied whole. SyncDiscs will never see the contents of the o directory.

Note 1: It has been the case that If a file to be ignored is found to exist in the secondary, then that file will be deleted from the secondary. This has caused some confusion for users. There is now a settings option to specify whether such files are to be deleted or simply skipped. See the settings page.

It is now possible to insert comments in to a zone file e.g. to remind you what the line is doing. Any line starting with the # (hash) character will be treated as a comment and ignored during the synchronisation.