Copy many files excluding a few of them using terminal

[AkiL Mussá]

Hi all,

Let's say a have 20 files in a directory. I want to copy 19 of them to another location.

How can I easily do this? Is there any option to exclude files on the CP command?

[scm]

You can do it if you pattern-match the names to exclude the unwanted one. Or try

cp $(ls | grep -v unwantedfilename) dest_dir

which looks suitably cunning and obscure.

[AkiL Mussá]

Hi,

It worked, but only for files without space char at the file name. When I try to escape the space chars, it give me an error.

[amussa@cust29-10 rock]$ cp $(ls -b | grep -v METALLICA) ../testdir
cp: invalid option -- \
Try `cp --help' for more information.
[amussa@cust29-10 rock]$