Folder names beginning with a bracket (i.e. [ or ] symbol) are always included in snapshots even if your filter says to not

[NintendoManiac64]

Describe the bug
If you have a filter that includes a folder name that begins with a bracket (i.e. [ or ] symbol) and you have that filter so to - aka "exclude", the folder in question will still get included in snapshots.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Make sure the parent directory is included in timeshift via the Users and/or Filters tab
2. Create a new folder inside of the directory mentioned in step1 named something like [test (]test will work too)
3. Inside of the folder you created in step2, put and/or create some file in it (e.g. a text file named "testing" that simply says "hello world")
4. Add the folder you created in step2 to timeshift's Filters tab set to - aka exclude
5. Create a timeshift snapshot
6. Browse the contents of the resulting timeshift snapshot
7. Observe how the folder you created in step2 was in fact included
   BONUS: Return to step2 but, this time, replace the bracket symbol with a dollar sign (i.e. $ symbol) and do the subsequent steps again - you will notice that timeshift will successfully exclude the folder.

Expected behavior
Folders that have a bracket as the first character of their name should be properly excluded in snapshots if the user has set a corresponding filter to exclude said folder.

Log
(includes more directories than necessary)

• log.txt

System:

• Linux Mint 21.3
• Cinnamon
• timeshift v24.01.1

Other comments
I've not tested brackets for file names (rather than folder names), nor have I tested brackets that are present but are not the first character. It's possible other symbols could also cause the same result, but I at least know that having the dollar sign (i.e. $ symbol) as the first character of a folder name still works perfectly fine for exclusion filters in timeshift.

[cD1rtX3]

This may seem like a silly question, but why do you have files starting with bracket characters?

[NintendoManiac64]

Simple - timestamps!

If I make a manual tweak to a configuration folder or the like (the sort of configurations you'd ideally want included in a TimeShift snapshot), for decades now even back on Windows, my go-to formatting is something like the following:

[2025-06-15] file name goes here

Then, in the context of backups specifically, I would have a few variations that would include "BAK" whether after the timestamp or after the file name depending on context e.g. [2025-06-15 BAK] file name goes here or [2025-06-15] file name goes here_BAK

But of course the problem is that you can end up with multiple variations and stuff, especially when doing multiple revisions, and you don't necessarily need to snapshot all of them which is how I discovered this issue, but I need to keep them on my primary disk while I'm still working with them and such (heck, it's kind of silly to be making snapshots of folders that may be rapidly changing and iterating).

[cD1rtX3]

Just don't have the brackets, à la "It hurts when I do [this] → don't do that"

This is a really silly bug, though, esp. since even Windows allows bracket characters in names.

[NintendoManiac64]

Just don't have the brackets, à la "It hurts when I do [this] → don't do that"

I already do a work-around for such a workflow - using unicode/full width brackets since, as a certified weeb, I have the Japanese IME installed/enabled anyway.

Nevertheless, as you so rightfully state, this is still a bug nevertheless and needed reporting as it was not already present on the issue tracker.

[ygerlach]

Is just the blacklist version not working or is the whitelist also not working?

Just don't have the brackets

Don't blame the user for a bug of the product software. Its like "You're holding it wrong"

Other users will also have the bug. Some may loose something (important), because it wasn't captured by the snapshot. (I imagine a scenario, where a folder is blacklisted, but a subfolder containing [ was whitelisted.
It wouldn't surprise me if characters like {,}, +, *,( or ) would also be affected.

Folders with other control characters like newlines, \r, \b, \033 would most certainly cause problems. Tho i admit, that a user capable of creating a folder containing those, is probably aware of misbehavior, that it might cause.

AFAIK the filters are all processed by rsync. The docs about that are here: https://download.samba.org/pub/rsync/rsync.1#PATTERN_MATCHING_RULES

[cD1rtX3]

Don't blame the user for a bug of the product software. Its like "You're holding it wrong"

I'm not a developer of this software :p