how to glob every hidden file except current and parent directory

Question

I want to glob every hidden file and directory, but not the current (.) and parent directory (..).

I am using bash.

Observe current behaviour:

$ ls -a
.  ..  ...a  ...aa  ..a  ..aa  .a  .aa  .aaa  a
$ echo *
a
$ echo .*
. .. ...a ...aa ..a ..aa .a .aa .aaa

I would like .* to behave like this

$ echo .*
...a ...aa ..a ..aa .a .aa .aaa

There is the shell option dotglob

$ shopt -s dotglob

that works in a way; now I can use * to glob everything (hidden or not) but not . and ..

$ echo *
...a ...aa ..a ..aa .a .aa .aaa a

but now I can't differentiate between hidden or not. Also, .* still globs . and ..

$ echo .*
. .. ...a ...aa ..a ..aa .a .aa .aaa

Is there a way to make .* not expand to . and ..?

Answer 1

You can use the GLOBIGNORE variable to hide the . and .. directories. This does automatically also set the dotglob option, so * now matches both hidden and non-hidden files. You can again manually unset dotglob, though, this then gives the behavior you want.

See this example:

$ ls -a
.  ..  a  .a  ..a
$ GLOBIGNORE=". .."
$ shopt -u dotglob
$ echo * #all (only non-hidden)
a
$ echo .* #all (only hidden)
.a ..a

Answer 2

Are you just looking for files? Are you in a position to use find?

Something like:

find . -maxdepth 1 -name ".*" -f -printf "%P \n"

Answer 3

ls -1a|egrep -v '^(\.|\.\.)$'