How do I move some but not all files from one directory to another?

shell rename filenames cp

5,453

Solution 1

If you have bash and don't care about also matching files like apple.not-a-number, try

shopt -s extglob
mv apple.!(0) /new/directory

Solution 2

if you're using bash you should be able to use

mv apple.[^0]* /other/directory/

this will move any files of which the extension does not start with 0 ( "^" at the beginning of [ ] means "not" in bash). If you're sure there's only one character as an ending you could also use

mv apple.[^0] /other/directory/

and if you have to make sure only files which end in numbers you could use

shopt -s extglob
mv apple.@([1-9])*([0-9]) /other/directory/

this would not match apple.01 or similar though....

and a last one which should get all the apple files ending in numbers

shopt -s extglob
mv apple.*([1-9]|[0-9]+([0-9])) /other/directory/

Solution 3

To be as specific as you want on the file to move and not to move

find /source/directory -maxdepth 1 -name "apple.*" ! -name "apple.0" -exec mv {} /new/directory \;

5,453

Author by

Olgun Kaya

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

Olgun Kaya almost 2 years
I need to move my files from one directory to other. But there is some issues. My file name pattern is like:
```
  apple.0, apple.<n>, n -> {0,1,2,3 ...~ }
```
so mv apple.* will not work, because I need to keep apple.0, which is always the active one.

How do I move them with exceptions (in this case, keeping apple.0)?
Olgun Kaya almost 13 years

bash: !: event not found is thrown.
Olgun Kaya almost 13 years

I am gonna try ls, egrep and mv with pipes.
tcoolspy almost 13 years

That won't quite work, you cannot use the && operator to combine these. First you need to run the shopt -s extglob option to set the shell to use extended globing mode, then you can use that glob pattern. The way this answer is formatted the shell tries to do the globing on the command line before any of the commands (including the one about enabling the option) are run.
tcoolspy almost 13 years

@OlgunKaya: This will work and match your files just like you want if you first run shopt -s extglob then in any following command or later in your script use that pattern.
jw013 almost 13 years

@Caleb Thanks, you are right. I've fixed it but Marcel's answer is still the better one.
Chris Perkins almost 13 years

Cool. I didn't know bash supported regexes. :)
tcoolspy almost 13 years

@MarcelG's answer is good, but because of the character class it is limited to single character exclusions. This extended glob pattern can be extended to be multiple-characters as well as other patterns. It's good to know about both.
tcoolspy almost 13 years

If you did want to combine these into a single command and not change the option in your current shell you would need to invoke a sub-shell. (shopt -s option ; command [...])
jw013 almost 13 years

Technically globs aren't quite normal regex. The glob [1-9][0-9]* will actually match any pattern that begins with two digits in the range 10-99 followed by anything, e.g. 23apples would match.
Marcel G almost 13 years

I got something mixed up (regex vs. globs/expansions as balki and jw023 point out) :-) the last option does not what I explained it does... so I fixed it with new options based on the solution by jw0123.
Vishwanath Dalvi almost 13 years

@balki bash and regexes are like husband and wife.
Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' almost 13 years

With extglob, you get the power of regexps but in a wildcard syntax. The zsh analog to these bash commands is to use setopt ksh_glob instead of shopt -s extglob, or to use setopt extended_glob then mv apple.*~apple.0 /other/directory/.