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Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2009 15:35:52 +0100
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Subject: shell commands - exclusion
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hi, i don't know if this is a freak question, but i was looking around to
see if this is possible, and what the convention would be.

if i have say one (or even two) single file/directories among many others,
and i want to perform any said function like cp, mv, rm, etc.. , to all
other files except that one or two, is there a way to do that in a single
command?
e.g
rm -r * {-except foo1 foo15}

and if there is, could the same be applied to other similar batch (?)
operations, like pkg_delete -f "*" { except firefox3 wine thunderbird }
etc..

i'm a bit new to the shell (took me a while to figure out *ls* and *ls |
more*), but i can't find anything from google cuz i don't know what this
would be called in the first place.

otherwise is it better to protect them with chflags or other trickery?

thanks in advance