Re: [SLE] Command-line puzzle

On Friday 11 March 2005 00:31, Paul W. Abrahams wrote:

Here's a little command-line puzzle. Suppose you want to move all files from directory A to directory B. You might think that

mv A/* B

would do it. But no -- that doesn't move the dotfiles. So how about

mv A/* A/.* B

No -- that tries to move "." and "..". So how about mv A/* A/.?* B

That still tries to move "..", but not ".". Finally, how about

mv A/* A/.[^.]* B

That actually does it, I think -- but it's very inelegant. Does anyone have an elegant solution (that works for other commands also)?

shopt -s dotglob mv A/* B/ Have a look at "man bash" for a description of shopt, dotglob and the other possibilities available