How to Use 'Mv' Command to Move Files Except Those in a Specific Directory

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

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.

How to move files and directories excluding one specific directory to this directory

Execute the following command first in terminal. This extends regexes.

shopt -s extglob

Now you can execute the following mv command

mv !(<file/dir not to be moved>) <Path to dest>

For example, If you are at ~/Test and you need to move all except ~/Test/Dest to ~/Test/Dest, you can execute it as given below, assuming you are at ~/Test

mv !(Dest) ~/Test/Dest

Move all files except one

Put the following to your .bashrc

shopt -s extglob

It extends regexes.
You can then move all files except one by

mv !(fileOne) ~/path/newFolder

Exceptions in relation to other commands

Note that, in copying directories, the forward-flash cannot be used in the name as noticed in the thread Why extglob except breaking except condition?:

cp -r !(Backups.backupdb) /home/masi/Documents/

so Backups.backupdb/ is wrong here before the negation and I would not use it neither in moving directories because of the risk of using wrongly then globs with other commands and possible other exceptions.

Move all files except some files

With GNU bash 4:

shopt -s extglob
echo mv !(log_20160[34]*.txt) other_folder

If everything looks okay remove echo.

---

See: https://stackoverflow.com/a/32309080/3776858

How to move all files in a subfolder except certain files

This is just a suggestion for your change strategy and not about xargs. You only need the bash shell and mv for the external tool.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

shopt -s nullglob extglob

array=( 
  folder.jpg
  log.txt
  Temp
  Cache 
  Completed
)

to_skip=$(IFS='|'; printf '%s' "*@(${array[*]})")

for item in /Public/Downloads/*; do
  [[ $item == $to_skip ]] && continue
  echo mv -v "$item" /Public/Downloads/Completed/ || exit
done

• Remove the echo if you think that the output is correct.
• Add the -x e.g. set -x (after the shebang) option to see which/what the code is doing or bash -x my_script, assuming my_script is the name of your script.

Move all folders except one

Maybe you are looking for something like this?

The answer to my question there states that what you are trying to to is achievable by using the extglob bash shell option. You can turn it on by executing shopt -s extglob or by adding that command to your ~/.bashrc and relogin. Afterwards you can use the function.

---

To use your example of moving everything from dir1 except dir1/src to dir2, this should work:

mv -vt dir2/ dir1/!(src)

Example output:

$ mkdir -pv dir1/{a,b,c,src} dir2
mkdir: created directory 'dir1'
mkdir: created directory 'dir1/a'
mkdir: created directory 'dir1/b'
mkdir: created directory 'dir1/c'
mkdir: created directory 'dir1/src'
mkdir: created directory 'dir2'
$ ls -l dir1/
total 16
drwxrwxr-x 2 dw dw 4096 Apr  7 13:30 a
drwxrwxr-x 2 dw dw 4096 Apr  7 13:30 b
drwxrwxr-x 2 dw dw 4096 Apr  7 13:30 c
drwxrwxr-x 2 dw dw 4096 Apr  7 13:30 src
$ ls -l dir2/
total 0
$ shopt -s extglob
$ mv -vt dir2/ dir1/!(src)
'dir1/a' -> 'dir2/a'
'dir1/b' -> 'dir2/b'
'dir1/c' -> 'dir2/c'
$ ls -l dir1/
total 4
drwxrwxr-x 2 dw dw 4096 Apr  7 13:30 src
$ ls -l dir2/
total 12
drwxrwxr-x 2 dw dw 4096 Apr  7 13:30 a
drwxrwxr-x 2 dw dw 4096 Apr  7 13:30 b
drwxrwxr-x 2 dw dw 4096 Apr  7 13:30 c

---

More information about extglob can be found here.

How to mv all files under a folder exclude some specify files

Demonstrating an extglob that does work:

mkdir -p "/tmp/$$" && cd "/tmp/$$"
touch {foo,bar}{'(1)',}.csv
shopt -s extglob
printf '%q\n' !(*[()]*).csv

...properly emits:

bar.csv
foo.csv

Because you didn't show the extglob that didn't work, we can't speak to why.

How to use 'cp' command to exclude a specific directory?

rsync is fast and easy:

rsync -av --progress sourcefolder /destinationfolder --exclude thefoldertoexclude

You can use --exclude multiples times.

rsync -av --progress sourcefolder /destinationfolder --exclude thefoldertoexclude --exclude anotherfoldertoexclude

Note that the dir thefoldertoexclude after --exclude option is relative to the sourcefolder, i.e., sourcefolder/thefoldertoexclude.

Also you can add -n for dry run to see what will be copied before performing real operation, and if everything is ok, remove -n from command line.

move only specific folders and subfolders using mv

Apparently bedtools does not exist in your local path. And about the other error message mv: inter-device move failed: ‘/home/cmccabe/Desktop/NGS/API/6-10-2016/bam/coverage’ to ‘/media/cmccabe/My Book Western Digital/coverage’; unable to remove target: Is a directory, probably that folder is not writable for your user. Move mv command will remove it from the device but probably you don't have the rights.

Check trying as root (with sudo) for the second problem. For the bedtools folder, please check your local path.

---

Related Topics