How to un-select files in shell wildcard patterns

[Polytropon]

On Fri, 21 Jun 2019 00:39:53 -0400, Robert Huff wrote:
> 
> 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*"

No, does not. Not in sh, not in csh... ;-)

Of course, the simple negation works as expected in tools like awk,
for example: "ls | awk '!/a/'", but I thought there would be some
convenient way to achieve the same _within_ the shell.



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...