Multiple –exclude options to tar

The tar’s “–exclude=PATTERN” option has always had me perplexed. As this is mostly intended for automation scenarios, I have never paid much attention to this option resorting to its more “pro-batch” variant “–exclude-from FILE”.

But today, as I went about making some backups I thought it’s enough, I need to learn how to use this option effectively. Having realized that the documentation on the matter is quite lacking, I decided to make a simple experiment.

Here are the commands I typed (in a bash terminal) to learn more about the “–exclude=PATTERN” option:
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