How do I exclude a folder when performing file operations i.e. cp, mv, rm and chown etc. in Linux

Question

How do you exclude a folder when performing file operations i.e. cp etc.

I would currently use the wild card * to apply file operation to all, but I need to exclude one

Answer 1

for file in *; do
  if [ $file != "file_I_dont_want_to_chown" ]
    then
      chown -R Camsoft $file
  fi
done