move all files except with extension

Question

I have moved a tar.bz2 from my Downloads to /usr/src, which is where I like to put all things that I install on my system. Now I extracted the file and I want to move its contents to /usr/share/icons. But I do not want to move the tar.bz2 itself:

# ls -l | grep Comix
-rw-rw-r--  1 guarddog guarddog   2190951 May 26 11:03 ComixCursors-0.8.2.tar.bz2
drwxr-xr-x  3 root     root          4096 Oct 23  2013 ComixCursors-Black
drwxr-xr-x  3 root     root          4096 Oct 23  2013 ComixCursors-Blue
drwxr-xr-x  3 root     root          4096 Oct 23  2013 ComixCursors-Green
drwxr-xr-x  3 root     root          4096 Oct 23  2013 ComixCursors-Orange

In the output command I want to move everything besides the tar.bz2, within the terminal.

I tried the following but unfortunately it moves the tar.bz2 as well:

 mv Comix*[!tar.bz] /usr/local/share

I expected the negation operator to exclude the file ending wit tar.bz. The solution below is what I was looking for, didn't want to use find with complicated flags.

http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/164025/exclude-one-pattern-from-glob-match — muru, May 26 '15 at 15:31
@SharadGautam I would like to down vote your answer..why have you used export ? — heemayl, May 26 '15 at 15:35
@SharadGautam That question can be solved without using export..although you have unset it later on, export is totally needless there — heemayl, May 26 '15 at 15:47

heemayl · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-26T15:46:52.200

2

You can use the GLOBIGNORE variable of bash:

GLOBIGNORE=ComixCursors-0.8.2.tar.bz2

Now run:

mv ComixCursors* /usr/share/icons/

Also note that when you are done with the operation it is good to unset the variable to avoid unwanted scenarios:

unset GLOBIGNORE

Or

GLOBIGNORE=

edited May 26 '15 at 15:46

answered May 26 '15 at 15:33

heemayl

91,753

@Arronical yes..it would be sensible if you are done with it..No, it does not automatically unset itself.. – heemayl May 26 '15 at 15:42

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered May 26 '15 at 15:41

1

Use the good old find:

find /usr/src -maxdepth 1 -type f -name "Comix*[^\.tar\.bz2]" -print0 | xargs -I{} -0 mv {} /usr/share/icons/

answered May 26 '15 at 15:41

A.B.

90,397

@Arronical Then write your answer :) – A.B. May 26 '15 at 15:44
@Arronical ComixCursors-Blue2 doesn't match. – A.B. May 26 '15 at 17:01

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 26 '15 at 17:52

There's also a simple command to use, for example in your Home Dir. we have a folder "Xtest" which contains test.tar.gz and test.txt, test2.txt etc. and an empty folder "Xtest2" where we want to move all files except .tar.gz then:

cd ~/Xtest
mv !(test.tar.gz) ~/Xtest2

All the content except test.tar.gz will be moved to Xtest2 folder.

move all files except with extension

3 Answers3