How would I exclude a group of tables based on a name prefix foo_* from a mysqldump?
This is based on answers from How do you mysqldump specific table(s)?

To exclude all tables from a mysqldump that starts with foo_, here is the shell script to do it

MYSQL_DATA=mydb
MYSQL_USER=root
MYSQL_PASS=rootpassword
MYSQL_CONN="-u${MYSQL_USER} -p${MYSQL_PASS}"
SQL="SET group_concat_max_len = 102400;"
SQL="${SQL} SELECT GROUP_CONCAT(CONCAT('--ignore-table=',table_name) SEPARATOR ' ')"
SQL="${SQL} FROM information_schema.tables WHERE table_schema='${MYSQL_DATA}'"
SQL="${SQL} AND table_name LIKE 'foo_%'"
EXCLUSION_LIST=`mysql ${MYSQL_CONN} -AN -e"${SQL}"`
mysqldump ${MYSQL_CONN} ${MYSQL_DATA} ${EXCLUSION_LIST} &gt; ${MYSQL_DATA}_tables.sql


To exclude all tables from a mysqldump that starts with foo_, adjust this line

SQL="${SQL} AND table_name LIKE 'foo_%'"


to whatever pattern you need. Maybe you can use the REGEXP operator

SQL="${SQL} AND table_name REGEXP '\_BAK\_2[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]"


Give it a Try !!!