How to copy some, but not all files?

Question

So, you can use the * as a wild card for all files when using cp within context of a directory. Is there a way to copy all files except x file?

Answer 1

In bash you can use extglob:

 $ shopt -s extglob  # to enable extglob
 $ cp !(b*) new_dir/

where !(b*) exclude all b* files.

You can later disable extglob with

 $ shopt -u extglob

Answer 2

Rsync handles this nicely.

Example copy all: rsync -aP /folder1/* /folder/2

Example copy all with exclusion: rsync -aP --exclude=x /folder1/* /folder2/

The -aP switch:

a: Similar to cp -a, recursive, etc. P: Shows progress, a nice feature of rsync.

Answer 3

This isn't a feature of cp, it's a feature of your shell (it expands the * to mean all non-dot files), so the answer depends on which shell you're using. For example, zsh supports this syntax:

$ cp ^x /path/to/destination

Where ^x means "all files except x"

You can also combine selection and de-selection patterns, e.g. to copy all wav files except those containing xyz, you can use:

cp *.wav~*xyz*

Answer 4

Could also be done in plain old (portable/compatible) bourne shell in a variety of ways with standard tools in a lot less elegant ways than using advanced shell globbing or commands with built-in-exclusion options.

If there are not too many files, this could be a way:

cp `ls | egrep -v '^excludename$'` destdir/.

Sure, bash and GNU tools are great and powerful, but they're still not always available. If you intend to put it in a portable script, I would recommend find as in the comment by Rush.