Bash Wildcards – Exclude `.` and `..` with `.*`

bashdot-fileswildcards

When I try to match all dot files in a directory with .* it seems to have a nasty side-effect: besides matching all (real) files and directories, it matches . and ... 

bash-3.2$ mv test/.* dest/
mv: rename test/. to dest/.: Invalid argument
mv: test/.. and dest/.. are identical

This seems really weird, since they are basically 'fake' directories, just there to make relative paths easy. They are not part of the contents of a directory, and I don't ever want them matched when I try to move the contents of one directory to another directory. I can't think of any scenario where I would want them matched by .*.

So how can I turn this off? (Besides using Z shell, which is not always available, and which may not be the shell in use by someone running a function I've written.)

Best Answer

You can use the GLOBIGNORE bash variable.

       GLOBIGNORE
              A colon-separated list of patterns defining the set of filenames
              to be ignored by pathname expansion.  If a filename matched by a
              pathname  expansion  pattern also matches one of the patterns in
              GLOBIGNORE, it is removed from the list of matches.

and

       .......................-.  The file names ``.''  and ``..''  are always
       ignored  when GLOBIGNORE is set and not null.

So if you set

GLOBIGNORE='*/.:*/..'

then path/.* will not match . and .., as you ask.

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