Hi,
With this configuration:
filebeat.inputs:
- 
type: log
enabled: true
paths:
- /tmp/cssd/*
exclude_files: ['^error.+$','^.+error$','^bar.+','^.+error.+$','^.+.log.1','.*.gz'] 
 - /tmp/cssd/*
 
Creating these files in the /tmp/cssd directory:
touch error-foo.log
touch foo-error.log
touch foo-error
touch foo.log.1
touch foo.log.gz
touch foo.log
touch error-bar.log
touch bar-error.log
touch bar-error
touch bar.log.1
touch bar.log.gz
touch bar.log
Gives the following log output:
2018-08-24T07:31:53.659+0100    INFO    registrar/registrar.go:124      States Loaded from registrar: 3
2018-08-24T07:31:53.659+0100    WARN    beater/filebeat.go:354  Filebeat is unable to load the Ingest Node pipelines for the configured modules because the Elasticsearch output is not configured/enabled. If you have already loaded the Ingest Node pipelines or are using Logstash pipelines, you can ignore this warning.
2018-08-24T07:31:53.659+0100    INFO    crawler/crawler.go:48   Loading Inputs: 1
2018-08-24T07:31:53.661+0100    INFO    log/input.go:118        Configured paths: [/tmp/cssd/*]
2018-08-24T07:31:53.661+0100    INFO    input/input.go:88       Starting input of type: log; ID: 1762196086849029994
2018-08-24T07:31:53.661+0100    INFO    crawler/crawler.go:82   Loading and starting Inputs completed. Enabled inputs: 1
2018-08-24T07:31:53.661+0100    INFO    cfgfile/reload.go:122   Config reloader started
2018-08-24T07:31:53.661+0100    INFO    cfgfile/reload.go:214   Loading of config files completed.
2018-08-24T07:32:03.662+0100    INFO    log/harvester.go:228    Harvester started for file: /tmp/cssd/bar.log
2018-08-24T07:32:03.662+0100    INFO    log/harvester.go:228    Harvester started for file: /tmp/cssd/foo.log
I cannot work out why Filebeat is starting a Harvester for the bar.log
Ben