move command not working in bash script

Question

I tried to move everything except a few items to a folder using a bash script with the following content. I tried these commands in the terminal first and got the expected results, but putting them inside a script produces the error mentioned below.

#! /bin/bash
shopt -s extglob
mv !(*.log | *.img) $1/build_files/ 2> /dev/null

ERROR:

build.sh: line 36: syntax error near unexpected token `(' 
build.sh: line 36: `    mv !(*.log|*.img) $1/build_files/ 2> /dev/null'

It'll be very helpful if someone could solve this. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can use find to do that:

find -maxdepth 1 -type f ! \( -name '*.img' -o -name '*.log' \) -exec mv {} $1/build_files/ \;

The argument -type f makes find look only for regular files. You have to remove it if you want to match any kind of file.

The argument -maxdepth 1 make find look for targets only on the current directory (by default the starting point of the search is the current directory).

See the find man page for more options and the different file types that you can target.

Answer 2

A quick workaround to this, as I've implemented:

#!/bin/bash
mv * build_files/ 2> /dev/null
mv build_files/*.log ./ && mv build_files/*.imx ./ && mv build_files/*.sh ./

I know this involves multiple iterations, which are not necessary and I'm open for improvements.