In Linux, how to copy all the files not starting with a given string?

Question

I tried with the following command:

cp src_folder/[!String]* dest_folder

However, this command will copy all the files that don't start with any of the characters 'S','t','r','i','n','g' instead of copying files that don't start with "String".

Answer 1

A variation on Konrad answer, using cp option -t to specify target directory simplifies the last command. It creates a single cp process to copy all the files.

ls src_folder | grep -v '^String' | xargs cp -t dest_folder

• list all files in src_folder
• filter out all those that start with String
• copy all remaining files to dest_dir