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I'm looking for something to concatenate all files with given extension within a directory, except one. Like: 

cat *.txt !(DISCARD.txt)  > catKEPT

This should concatenate all *.txt files in directory, except DISCARD.txt.

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2 Answers 2

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find . -maxdepth 1 -iname '*.txt' -not -name 'DISCARD.txt' -exec cat {} +>catKEPT
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If you are using bash (most of the time this is the case), you may use the extglob shell option that will extend your shell with a more powerful pattern matching syntax.

You can turn it on with shopt -s extglob, and turn it off with shopt -u extglob.

In your example, you would simply do:

$ shopt -s extglob
$ cat -- !(DISCARD).txt > catKEPT

You can find more about this command in this StackOverflow answer.

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  • I tried it, but command got stuck (no output)
    – dovah
    Nov 28, 2015 at 11:15
  • Are you sure you have bash ? Try echo $SHELL to know what shell you are using.
    – perror
    Nov 28, 2015 at 11:16
  • OP wants to cat only .txt files so you'll have to use the glob like this: cat -- !(DISCARD).txt
    – don_crissti
    Nov 28, 2015 at 11:32

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