Description

The HideFiles directive configures a <Directory> section to hide all directory entries, e.g. its files and sub-directories, that match the given regular expression. These files can still be operated on by other FTP commands (DELE, RETR, etc), as constrained by any applicable <Limit>s, but this can be modified using the IgnoreHidden directive. Note that this directive manipulates a file's "hidden-ness", but doesn't do any hiding by itself. A <Limit> section, with IgnoreHidden enabled, does the actual hiding of the files from the <Limit>ed commands.

As <Directory> configurations are inherited by sub-directories, the "none" parameter can be used to disable any inherited file hiding within a sub-directory, usually through the use of a .ftpaccess file.

The optional parameters are used to restrict the rule for hiding files only to specific users. If "user" restriction is given, then expression is a user-expression specifying to which users the rule applies. Similarly for the "group" restriction. For the "class" restriction, the expression is simply the name of connection class for whom the rule will apply.

An unrestricted HideFiles directive and an unrestriected ShowFiles directive cannot be used simultaneously in the same context.

Examples:

  # Hide configuration and passwd files from view
  HideFiles "(//.conf|passwd)$"

  # ...or the same regex, without the quotes
  HideFiles (/.conf|passwd)$

  # Hide those same files from everyone _except_ a special user
  HideFiles (/.conf|passwd)$ user !tj

  # Using the ! prefix to "invert" the regular expression matching,
  # allow only .txt and .html files to be seen
  HideFiles !(/.txt|/.html)$

  # Only let users of the webmaster group see HTML files, but nothing else
  HideFiles !(/.htm|/.html)$ group webmaster

See Also: HideGroup, HideUser, HideNoAccess