How to exclude certain files in `ls`?

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

4 Answers

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"

3

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.

3

You can also use:

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

1

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.

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