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Accepted
Alice Ryhl
Asked: 2014-08-19 06:54:17 +0800 CST

How to exclude certain files in `ls`?

  • 772

I would like to run ls and exclude certain files in the output.

When I run the following command, I get all files, each on a separate line:

$ ls -1
file1
file2
file3
temp

I would like to run this command in a way so that it shows:

$ ls -1 <insert magic here> temp
file1
file2
file3
bash

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer
    ls -I <filename>

    -I: Ignore the filename, i.e. don't list the specified file.

    To ignore more than one file add a -I before each filename.

    ls -I file1 -I file2

    To ignore files by their name extensions do the following, for example.

    ls -I "*.jpg" -I "*.svg"
    • 138

  2. For me, if I use -I once, it works, but if I use twice it doesn't. E.g:

    • This works:

      ls -I *.csv

    • But:

      ls -I *.csv -I *.txt

      doesn't work and returns .txt files instead.

    --ignore did the trick for me. This is what I needed and worked:

    ls -lhrt --ignore="*.gz" --ignore="*.1"

    The above will list files from my log folder excluding old backup logs.

    • 25

  3. You can also use:

    ls --ignore={"*.jpg","*.png","*.svg"}
    • 16

  4. I think that this produces the output you're looking for:

    ls -1 !(temp)

    Apparently, you need shopt -s extglob for that to work (I have it enabled, so I guess some time in the distant past I found it useful and enabled it).

    I guess you could also use grep to filter the output:

    ls -1 | grep -v '^temp$'

    Using a pipe and filters provides a lot more flexibility, and skills that are transferable to other commands/situations, though you might not be interested in that for this specific case.

    • 5