Cp Command to Exclude Certain Files from Being Copied

Late into the game but here is a very different solution using plain Bash and cp: you can use a global file specification while having some files ignored.

Assume the directory contains the files:

$ ls *
listed1  listed2  listed3  listed4  unlisted1  unlisted2  unlisted3

Using the GLOBIGNORE variable:

$ export GLOBIGNORE='unlisted*'
$ ls *
listed1  listed2  listed3  listed4

Or with more specific exclusions:

$ export GLOBIGNORE='unlisted1:unlisted2'
$ ls *
listed1  listed2  listed3  listed4  unlisted3

Or using negative matches:

$ ls !(unlisted*)
listed1  listed2  listed3  listed4

This also supports several unmatched patterns:

$ ls !(unlisted1|unlisted2)
listed1  listed2  listed3  listed4  unlisted3

Quick Start

Run:

rsync -av --exclude='path1/in/source' --exclude='path2/in/source' [source]/ [destination]

Notes

• -avr will create a new directory named [destination].
• source and source/ create different results:
  • source — copy the contents of source into destination.
  • source/ — copy the folder source into destination.
• To exclude many files:
  • --exclude-from=FILE — FILE is the name of a file containing other files or directories to exclude.
• --exclude may also contain wildcards:
  • e.g. --exclude=*/.svn*

Modified from:

Example

Starting folder structure:

.
├── destination
└── source
    ├── fileToCopy.rtf
    └── fileToExclude.rtf

Run:

rsync -av --exclude='fileToCopy.rtf' source/ destination

Ending folder structure:

.
├── destination
│   └── fileToExclude.rtf
└── source
    ├── fileToCopy.rtf
    └── fileToExclude.rtf

You can use cp with the ! character.

For example, to exclude the file or files file.txt, test.jpg and the directory nodir, while copying all others from the source directory to the destination directory, you may run:

cp source/!(file.txt|test.jpg|nodir) destination

If you have, for example, a file structure as this one:

.
├── destination
└── source
    ├── file.rtf
    ├── file.txt
    ├── test.jpg
    ├── yes
    |    └── test.jpg 
    └── nodir
         └── other.jpg

The result after running the above command is:

.
└── source (not modified)
└── destination
    ├── file.rtf
    └── yes
         └── test.jpg 

Here is an article with information on rsync and cp with exclude: How to cp copy and exclude internal files or directories (equivalent to rsync –exclude)