Ygtjki

I have a folder A. Inside the folder, there are some files a,b,c,d and there is a subfolder, B, containing files e,f,g.

Suppose I want to open files a,b,c,d: then I just type xdg-open *. However, this also goes into subfolder B and opens e,f,g as well. What's the easiest way to open just a,b,c,d?

EDIT: what I really mean with the question is how to open all files in a folder, but not those contained in any subfolders.

How about find A -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec xdg-open ;

That should open all files in folder A without going any further than the top level.

Method #1 - Shell expansions

If you know that the items you're after are sequentially named you can use shell expansions in a variety of ways.

Examples

$ xdg-open [a-d]
$ xdg-open a..d
$ xdg-open a* b*

Method #2 - Extended globbing

In Bash (versions 3.2+) you can use extended globbing to included everything except something, which I believe is what you're asking for.

Examples

$ xdg-open !(B)
$ xdg-open !(A|B)

Demos

I'll often times use echo so I can see what the globstar or extended globbing will work out to be without actually running a real command on the expanded lists of files and/or directories.

Example

Say for example I have the following directory of files.

$ ls -l
total 8
-rw-rw-r-- 1 saml saml 0 Nov 15 20:12 a
drwxrwxr-x 2 saml saml 4096 Nov 15 20:23 A
-rw-rw-r-- 1 saml saml 0 Nov 15 20:12 b
drwxrwxr-x 2 saml saml 4096 Nov 15 20:12 B
-rw-rw-r-- 1 saml saml 0 Nov 15 20:12 c
-rw-rw-r-- 1 saml saml 0 Nov 15 20:12 d
-rw-rw-r-- 1 saml saml 0 Nov 15 20:12 e
-rw-rw-r-- 1 saml saml 0 Nov 15 20:12 f

Now if we try out the above expansions we can see how they'd fair.

$ echo [a-d]
a A b B c d

$ echo a..d
a b c d

$ echo a* b*
a b

$ echo !(B)
a A b c d e f

$ echo !(A|B)
a b c d e f

Extended globbing

There are a variety of other methods you can use to control the way that the shell matches. For example:

 ?(pattern-list) Matches zero or one occurrence of the given patterns
 *(pattern-list) Matches zero or more occurrences of the given patterns
 +(pattern-list) Matches one or more occurrences of the given patterns
 @(pattern-list) Matches one of the given patterns
 !(pattern-list) Matches anything except one of the given patterns

You can read more about them in this Linux Journal article titled: Bash Extended Globbing.

Using the zsh shell (from e.g. an interactive bash shell):

zsh -c 'xdg-open A/*(.)'

This would use the . glob modifier in zsh that makes A/* only match regular files under the A directory. To also match symbolic links to regular files use A/*(-.) as the globbing pattern.