Backing up dot files in my home folder

In spending some time with customizing my machine, I have some heavily modified configuration files within my home folder.  As a good measure, here's a way to help backup dot files in your home folder:

$ tar cvfz my_dotfile_backup-$(date +"%Y-%m-%d").tar.gz --exclude .file_to_exclude --exclude .vscode  ~/\.*

The above will:

• c = create a tarball
• v = verbose
• f = write the output to the specificed file
• z = compress the output file with gzip. 
• Output filename will be "my_dotfile_backup-" + the date the command was run in YYYY-MM-DD format + ".tar.gz"
• Exclude files matching .file_to_exclude, and .vscode
• ~ = My home folder
• \.* Escaped dot character then wildcard (meaning the filename needs to start with a .)

Here's an example output of when the command above was run:

$ ls -l my_dot*

-rw-r--r--  1 arojas  staff  30093272 Feb 28 12:17 my_dotfile_backup-2020-02-28.tar.gz