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Wildcards and exceptions

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# 1  
Old 03-11-2013
Wildcards and exceptions
Hello:

I have a very basic question. I'd like to select all files except for one file. For example, say I want to move all of the files in my current directory to a subdirectory called archive, I would use
Code:
mv ./* archive/

But what if I want to move all files except for README.txt? Is there an easy way to do this?

Thanks in advance.
# 2  
Old 03-11-2013
Expansions like this in shell are usually called globs. Don't think there's a straightforward way with standard globbing.

Depending on your goal though, there may be other means. Why are you moving them to archive? If you want to create a tarball out of them, you could do so directly using tar's exclude options...
# 3  
Old 03-11-2013
Thanks for the reply, Corona688. tar might be a good option then. Basically, I'm trying to write a script that takes all the directories in my current directory and put them in a subdirectory (or tar ball, I guess). So, I use
Code:
mv */ archive/

but get the warning
Code:
mv: cannot move `archive/' to a subdirectory of itself, `archive/archive'

I guess an alternative is just to suppress that output (i.e., redirect to /dev/null)?
# 4  
Old 03-11-2013
Yeah, that would work.

Another option would be find, if you have the -maxdepth option. What's your system?
# 5  
Old 03-11-2013
Mac OS X 10.8.2.
# 6  
Old 03-12-2013
You don't have maxdepth, then unfortunately.

You can do this:

Code:
for FILE in *
do
        [ -d "$FILE" ] || continue # Ignore non-directories
        [ "$FILE" = "archive" ] && continue # Ignore archive folder

        # other stuff you want to do for each folder
done

# 7  
Old 03-12-2013
If you have zsh you could use extended globbing:

Code:
zsh $ echo $ZSH_VERSION
5.0.2
zsh $ setopt extendedglob
zsh $ ls -l
total 0
drwxr-xr-x+ 1 chubler Users 0 Mar 13 06:33 archive
drwxr-xr-x+ 1 chubler Users 0 Mar 13 06:33 dir1
drwxr-xr-x+ 1 chubler Users 0 Mar 13 06:33 dir2
-rw-r--r--  1 chubler Users 0 Mar 13 06:36 file1
zsh $ echo ^archive(/)
dir1 dir2
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