UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Rather new to unix, so please don't beat me!

I'm trying to get a list of files into a variable that I can use throughout the rest of the script. The challenge is that I need to exclude a certain extension from the list, and I'm having trouble with it. For example:

item_a
item_a.exe
item_a.txt
item_b
item_b.exe
item_b.txt
item_t
item_x

list=`ls -l item*[^txt\$] | awk '{print $9}'`

At first, I thought this would work, but apparently both t and x are forbidden, thus eliminating potential files from my list. I need to exclude a block of characters, not a range of individual characters. I have spent hours searching for the answer (and learned a lot of other stuff along the way), but I can't figure this one out. Any help would be appreciated.

If ksh use...

list=!(*.txt)

...it might work in other shells too.

@Ygor
I don't know much at all about ksh, although from what I gather it's not too different from sh (about the extent of my knowledge on the subject). This script is using sh, and that didn't work, however, I will keep it in mind.

BTW - I've learned more from what *didn't* work than from what did, so that will go on my list of "glad to know it" stuff.

@Driver
I ran into that problem with the curly braces after I posted the message. However, I hadn't tried all the different flags for grep, and that worked perfectly for what I need. Thanks!

Don't use ls -l for this. Ir produces extra fields for you to later strip away.

ls -d item*

will give you a list of files that start with "item".

The -d will handle the case where you have a directory named "itemdir" or something. We will list the directory itself, but not the contents.

Then to get rid of the *.txt files:

ls -d item* | grep -v txt\$