how to glob every hidden file except current and parent directory

Question

I want to glob every hidden file and directory, but not the current (.) and parent directory (..).

I am using bash.

Observe current behaviour:

$ ls -a
.  ..  ...a  ...aa  ..a  ..aa  .a  .aa  .aaa  a
$ echo *
a
$ echo .*
. .. ...a ...aa ..a ..aa .a .aa .aaa

I would like .* to behave like this

$ echo .*
...a ...aa ..a ..aa .a .aa .aaa

There is the shell option dotglob

$ shopt -s dotglob

that works in a way; now I can use * to glob everything (hidden or not) but not . and ..

$ echo *
...a ...aa ..a ..aa .a .aa .aaa a

but now I can't differentiate between hidden or not. Also, .* still globs . and ..

$ echo .*
. .. ...a ...aa ..a ..aa .a .aa .aaa

Is there a way to make .* not expand to . and ..?

Answer 1

You can use the GLOBIGNORE variable to hide the . and .. directories. This does automatically also set the dotglob option, so * now matches both hidden and non-hidden files. You can again manually unset dotglob, though, this then gives the behavior you want.

See this example:

$ ls -a
.  ..  a  .a  ..a
$ GLOBIGNORE=".:.."
$ shopt -u dotglob
$ echo * # all (only non-hidden)
a
$ echo .* # all (only hidden)
.a ..a

Note the following corner cases shown by numerous users in the comments:

• . and .. are always ignored as long as GLOBIGNORE has a non-null value. GLOBIGNORE=":" ; echo .*, for instance, would work for the example above, even though it is less readable.
• If you want to match hidden directories only (and not all hidden files) and therefore glob with a trailing slash, echo .*/, you need to set GLOBIGNORE='.:..:./:../', because the glob will match ./ and ../, which must be excluded explicitly to prevent them from showing up in the result.

Answer 2

The first glob below requires a leading dot and at least one additional non-dot character. These two globs together will match any possible hidden files, including files with more than one leading dot, but not . or .., which is exactly what you asked for.

ls -ld .[!.]* ..?*

Answer 3

With zsh, fish, pdksh, and at least some of its derivatives like mksh, posh, ksh93 since ksh93u+m 2020-08-09, bash since 5.2:

echo .*

(the globs of those shells never expand . or .., which is the most sensible thing to do).

With older versions of bash:

shopt -s dotglob
echo [.]*

(with dotglob, . and .. are not expanded unless you use a glob that starts with a literal . as in .* or dir/.*, as otherwise things like chmod +rwx -- * would have unexpected consequences).

Or:

GLOBIGNORE=.
echo .*

(with bash, like for dotglob and for the same reason, as soon as GLOBIGNORE is non-empty, both . and .. are automatically ignored in globs not contains slashes (and dotglob is enabled) and this time even with a literal . as above. Note that GLOBIGNORE=/ for instance would have the same effect).

Note however that . and .. would still be included in globs like dir/.* or .*/file.

With older versions of ksh93

FIGNORE='@(.|..)' # or FIGNORE=.:..
echo .*

Answer 4

Are you just looking for files? Are you in a position to use find?

Something like (assuming GNU find):

find . -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -name ".*" -printf "%P\n"

Answer 5

You want to show hidden files/folders BUT . and .. ?

Use this bash wildcard {.[!.]*,..?*}

Sample Data

You can try by generating sample data :

$ touch ...a  ...aa  ..a  ..aa  .a  .aa  .aaa  a
$ mkdir ...b  ...bb  ..b  ..bb  .b  .bb  .bbb  b

Proof

Below you can see the expected removed entries :

$ diff <(\ls -a) <(\ls -ad {.[!.]*,..?*})
1,3d0
< .
< ..
< a
11d7
< b

Pro

Useful to delete all hidden elements for example :

$ rm -rf .*
rm: cannot remove directory: `.'
rm: cannot remove directory: `..'

# <regenerate sample data here>

$ rm -rf {.[!.]*,..?*}
# No error

Answer 6

Try ls -A.  Here's an excerpt from the manual:

-A, --almost-all

do not list implied . and ..

Answer 7

ls -1a|egrep -v '^(\.|\.\.)$'