How to use 'mv' command to move files except those in a specific directory?

Question

I am wondering - how can I move all the files in a directory except those files in a specific directory (as \'mv\' does not have a \'--exclude\' option)?

Answer 1

This isn't exactly what you asked for, but it might do the job:

mv the-folder-you-want-to-exclude somewhere-outside-of-the-main-tree
mv the-tree where-you-want-it
mv the-excluded-folder original-location

(Essentially, move the excluded folder out of the larger tree to be moved.)

So, if I have a/ and I want to exclude a/b/c/*:

mv a/b/c ../c
mv a final_destination
mkdir -p a/b
mv ../c a/b/c

Or something like that. Otherwise, you might be able to get find to help you.

Answer 2

mv * exclude-dir

was the perfect solution for me

Answer 3

Lets's assume the dir structure is like,

|parent
    |--child1
    |--child2
    |--grandChild1
    |--grandChild2
    |--grandChild3
    |--grandChild4
    |--grandChild5
    |--grandChild6

And we need to move files so that it would appear like,

|parent
    |--child1
    |   |--grandChild1
    |   |--grandChild2
    |   |--grandChild3
    |   |--grandChild4
    |   |--grandChild5
    |   |--grandChild6
    |--child2

In this case, you need to exclude two directories child1 and child2, and move rest of the directories in to child1 directory.

use,

mv !(child1|child2) child1

This will move all of rest of the directories into child1 directory.

Answer 4

ls | grep -v exclude-dir | xargs -t -I '{}' mv {} exclude-dir

Answer 5

This will move all files at or below the current directory not in the ./exclude/ directory to /wherever...

find -E . -not -type d -and -not -regex '\./exclude/.*' -exec echo mv {} /wherever \;

Answer 6

Since find does have an exclude option, use find + xargs + mv:

find /source/directory -name ignore-directory-name -prune -print0 | xargs -0 mv --target-directory=/target/directory

Note that this is almost copied from the find man page (I think using mv --target-directory is better than cpio).