How can I use inverse or negative wildcards when pattern matching in a unix/linux shell?

Question

Say I want to copy the contents of a directory excluding files and folders whose names contain the word \'Music\'.

cp [exclude-matches] *Music* /target_direc         


        

Answer 1

In Bash you can do it by enabling the extglob option, like this (replace ls with cp and add the target directory, of course)

~/foobar> shopt extglob
extglob        off
~/foobar> ls
abar  afoo  bbar  bfoo
~/foobar> ls !(b*)
-bash: !: event not found
~/foobar> shopt -s extglob  # Enables extglob
~/foobar> ls !(b*)
abar  afoo
~/foobar> ls !(a*)
bbar  bfoo
~/foobar> ls !(*foo)
abar  bbar

You can later disable extglob with

shopt -u extglob