IGNORE.LIST(5)

💖 ignore.list(5) — the glow-up guide 💖

okay bestie, so this is the manual page for ignore.list — yes, section 5, we're in file-formats territory — and it's literally the config file for websec url monitoring. she's small, she's powerful, she's giving "quiet luxury" but for your diff output. let's get into it 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

ignore.list — websec url monitoring configuration 🎀

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

🦋 IGNORE KEYWORDS 🦋

so when websec is figuring out which parts of a particular web page have changed, sometimes you're just not interested in certain paragraphs — the ones containing certain predefined words. no cap.

think about pages like InfoWorld, PC Magazine and PC Week — they literally have the current date/time sitting there whether or not there's new or changed content. 😭 and that date/time is not the content, bestie. so in such cases, you use IGNORE KEYWORDS to skip those paragraphs which contain date/time information. slay.

Ignore keywords live in a file called ignore.list, sitting in the same directory as websec. and like the URL list, the ignore keywords are partitioned into different sections — each section gets a user-defined name. it's giving organized. example time:

[General]
all rights reserved
an error occurred
click here
comments
copyright

[Date_Time]
January\s+\d{1,2}
February\s+\d{1,2}
March\s+\d{1,2}
April\s+\d{1,2}
May\s+\d{1,2}

see how there are two sections up there? General and Date_Time. iconic. and you use them in the URL list like this:

Ignore = General

and you can also use multiple sections at one go, because why choose:

Ignore = General,Date_Time

if you use certain ignore keywords regularly, you might want to add them to a defaults section in the URL list. set it and forget it, periodt.

and here's the spicy part 🔥 — ignore keywords can contain regular expressions. for example, the ignore keyword January\s+\d{1,2} tells websec to look for the string January, followed by one or more spaces, followed by at least one but not more than two digits. the way that regex just *works*… 💅

two sections of ignore keywords are supplied in this distribution:

• General — contains some general ignore keywords which you may want to use
• Date_Time — contains date/time detectors coded using regular expressions

Feel free to add your own! ✨

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💜 IGNORE URLS 💜

most advertisements in webpages are of the following form:

<A HREF="http://page.url.com/advert/cgi-bin/" ...>
<IMG SRC="advert.animated.gif" ...>
Click here for free beer!
</A>

and bestie, such advertisements can be ignored when running webdiff using ignore URLs. bye felicia to the free beer banner 🍓

Ignore URLs are also stored in ignore.list. they contain all of parts of the URL referred to by the <A HREF> tag which you want to ignore. (yes, "all of parts", that's the original's phrasing and we respect it 💀). example:

[Adverts]
page.url.com/advert/cgi-bin/

use the Adverts section in the URL list like so:

IgnoreURL = Adverts

and you can also use multiple sections at one go, because of course:

IgnoreURL = Adverts1,Adverts2

if you use certain ignore URLs regularly, you might want to add them to a defaults section in the URL list. same energy as before, lowkey genius.

like ignore keywords, ignore URLs can contain regular expressions. 💅

An Adverts section is supplied in this distribution. Feel free to add your own! 🌈

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

• url.list(5)

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🎀 AUTHOR 🎀

Baruch Even <websec@ev-en.org> is maintaining this program. thank you for your service king 🫶

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okay that's the whole page bestie, no notes, go configure your websec and live your best monitored life 💖

this gem was brought to you by perl v5.42.0, dated 2025-07-25 — mwah, IGNORE.LIST(5), you ate 💅✨