How to un-select files in shell wildcard patterns

[Robert Huff]

Polytropon writes:

>  I'm interested in a convenient method to "un-select" files
>  when using regular (sh) shell wildcards. It's quite easy to
>  describe things like
>  
>  	*.tex
>  
>  to perform an operation on all LaTeX source files, or
>  
>  	*a*
>  
>  on all files whose name contains (at least) one "a". Patterns
>  that are based on the inclusion of certain attributes are not
>  a problem to deal with using the builtin pattern matching of
>  the shell.
>  
>  But what about the opposite? Let's say, perform an operation
>  on all files _except_ the LaTeX source files, or all files
>  whose name does _not_ contain an "a"?
>  
>  Is there a good method to do this, except creating a kind
>  of "custom regex wrapper script" that does the selection part,
>  for further use with `subshell` or | xargs?

	Um ... does

Polyt> ls -al "*^a*"