>> i wanted to move a bunch of files & directories, all except a certain >> few, so i figured i'd use !(this|or|that). so first i looked to see >> if +(this|or|that) isolated what i expected... > > you would want /@(??) or simply /??, since there's no need for extglob for > that.
well what i actually wanted was to conjure an expression that selected a small few files, and then invert the expression, in particular i wanted to isolate all 2 letter names plus a few other names, and then invert, so that the aforementioned were not in the selection. perhaps that's just a tad beyond what a bash expression can do (without writing a loop)?
