In Linux, how to copy all the files not starting with a given string?

regex linux unix cp
mstaniloiu picture mstaniloiu · Jan 12, 2011 · Viewed 16.6k times · Source

I tried with the following command:

cp src_folder/[!String]* dest_folder

However, this command will copy all the files that don't start with any of the characters 'S','t','r','i','n','g' instead of copying files that don't start with "String".

Answer

Didier Trosset picture Didier Trosset · Jan 12, 2011

A variation on Konrad answer, using cp option -t to specify target directory simplifies the last command. It creates a single cp process to copy all the files.

ls src_folder | grep -v '^String' | xargs cp -t dest_folder
  • list all files in src_folder
  • filter out all those that start with String
  • copy all remaining files to dest_dir

Related questions

linux find regex

I'm having trouble using the regex of the find command. Probably something I don't understand about escaping on the command line. Why are these not the same? find -regex '.*[1234567890]' find -regex '.*[[:digit:]]' Bash, Ubuntu

Read More
How to remove non-ascii chars using sed

I want to remove non-ascii chars from some file. I have already tried these many regexs. sed -e 's/[\d00-\d128]//g' # not working cat /bin/mkdir | sed -e 's/[\x00-\x7F]//g' >/tmp/aa but …

Read More
Expect regex number pattern

I'm having this poblem with a expect script. I want to capture when the output of a command is "0" and distinguish from other numbers or chains like "000" or "100" my code is: #!/usr/bin/expect -f set timeout 3 spawn bash send "…

Read More