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 single folder.

The command I'm actually wanting to use is chown to change the owner of all the files in a directory but I need to exclude one sub directory.

Solution 1

If you're using bash and enable extglob via shopt -s extglob then you can use !(<pattern>) to exclude the given pattern.

Solution 2

find dir_to_start -name dir_to_exclude -prune -o -print0 | xargs -0 chown owner

find dir_to_start -not -name "file_to_exclude"  -print0 | xargs -0 chown owner

Solution 3

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

Solution 4

Combine multiple small sharp tools of unix: To exclude the folder "foo"

% ls -d * | grep -v foo | xargs -d "\n" chown -R Camsoft

Solution 5

For this situation I would recommend using find. You can specify paths to exclude using the -not -iwhilename 'PATH'. Then using exec you execute the command you want to execute

find . -not -iwholename './var/foo*' -exec chown www-data '{}' \;

Although this probably does help for your situation I have also see scripts set the immutable flag. Make sure you remove the flag when your done you should use trap for this just in case the script is killed early (note: run from a script, the trap code runs when the bash session exits). A lot of trouble in my option but it's good in some situations.

cd /var
trap 'chattr -R -i foo > /dev/null 2>&1' 0
chattr -R +i foo
chown -R www-data *

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Comments

[Camsoft]

Would that work recursively, drilling down in to sub-directories?

[SourceSeeker]

You don't need ls. Just use for file in *

[Camsoft]

I've executed the command above. Can you give me an example that uses the !() syntax in combination with chown?

[SourceSeeker]

The -0 here accomplishes nothing.

[Camsoft]

I'm getting an "File name too long" error when executing the above command. The filename shown in the error seems to be a concatenation of all the files in the directory separated with "\n"

[Camsoft]

Unfortunately the directory I want to exclude is a certs folder and messing the permissions of this up will break our HTTPS requests.

[Camsoft]

That worked! One more question will the excluded filename be applied recusively, so that if there is a folder or file called foo deeper in the directory tree will that one also be skiped too? I only want to exclude the first foo which is a direct descendent of the top level folder.

[SourceSeeker]

That's because ls is not intended to be used this way.

[Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams]

Only if you use a pattern such as **/foo.

[Camsoft]

So like: chown 0755 -R !(**/foo) ?

[Christopher Bruns]

'-d "\n"' might help. I'm not on a linux box at the moment, so I can't be certain. It works with cygwin.

[Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams]

Correct, although ** requires the globstar shell option to be enabled (which only exists in bash 4.0), and it doesn't contain foo, so you'd need chown 0755 -R !({foo,**/foo}).

[Hasturkun]

@Dennis Williamson: actually, it's probably because of the -0

[Martin Beckett]

Fair enough - it's just sometimes the solution is simpler than a complex regex/xargs statement ;-)

[Volomike]

This works for me on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and also CentOS5. I first run that shopt command, cd into the dir I want to adjust, and then run chown with the NOT condition. Works like a charm. Really cool hack!

[user569825]

At least for bash an sh you'll need a do to logically commence the loop.

[Craig Harshbarger]

How would you do this in a bash script? chown -R 775 !(foo) breaks. I tried !"(foo)" but then it says no such file or directory

[Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams]

@CraigHarshbarger: Did you do the first part?

[Craig Harshbarger]

No, very new to this. Can you give me an example of the full command? Thanks

[Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams]

@CraigHarshbarger: shopt -s extglob