Move all files except one

Solution 1:

If you use bash and have the extglob shell option set (which is usually the case):

mv ~/Linux/Old/!(Tux.png) ~/Linux/New/

Solution 2:

Put the following to your .bashrc

shopt -s extglob

It extends regexes. You can then move all files except one by

mv !(fileOne) ~/path/newFolder

Exceptions in relation to other commands

Note that, in copying directories, the forward-flash cannot be used in the name as noticed in the thread Why extglob except breaking except condition?:

cp -r !(Backups.backupdb) /home/masi/Documents/

so Backups.backupdb/ is wrong here before the negation and I would not use it neither in moving directories because of the risk of using wrongly then globs with other commands and possible other exceptions.

Solution 3:

I would go with the traditional find & xargs way:

find ~/Linux/Old -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -not -name Tux.png -print0 | 
    xargs -0 mv -t ~/Linux/New

-maxdepth 1 makes it not search recursively. If you only care about files, you can say -type f. -mindepth 1 makes it not include the ~/Linux/Old path itself into the result. Works with any filenames, including with those that contain embedded newlines.

One comment notes that the mv -t option is a probably GNU extension. For systems that don't have it

find ~/Linux/Old -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -not -name Tux.png \
    -exec mv '{}' ~/Linux/New \;