20

if i want to see e.g. files of a particular extension only using dir listing, i can do that using the command: 

DIR *.txt

And it shows all files with .txt extension.
Now i want to know is there any command with wich i can exclude certain extensions?
For example, i don't want to see any file with extension .exe, how can i do that?

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27

DIR wont allow what you are trying to do. However DIR along with FINDSTR can solve this.

e.g. The following ignores all .txt files in the DIR listing.

dir | findstr /v /i "\.txt$"
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  • 2
    you may want to use dir /b | findstr /v /i "\.txt$" because dir will output the header and the possible incorrect files and folders count at the end – phuclv Apr 6 '17 at 4:08
  • Why findstr over just find? – Sopalajo de Arrierez Jan 1 '19 at 16:59
  • Because find searches for text and findstr supports regexes I suggested Findstr. If you just want to search an exact string find would work fine too. – IUnknown Jan 2 '19 at 11:37
8
dir /B | find /V ".txt"

This would list all files and find would filter out anything that doesn't contain ".txt". It's far from perfect, but maybe it's enough :)

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3

It depends from your command interpreter.

Microsoft's cmd doesn't have such a facility, as you can see from the other answers where one has to post-process the output of dir. JP Software's TCC/LE does. It is called a file exclusion range and is used like this for the example in your question:

dir /[!*.exe] *

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  • Thank you, but i think this tool run as standalone program. I am making my application where i run external process using windows shell or bash in ubuntu, so this tool will not fit, If they provide cmd line switches then it will be useful. – Johnydep Jan 30 '12 at 0:01
  • 1
    The aforegiven clearly is a command-line switch. Read the hyperlinked documentation. Of course, in most programming languages it is fairly silly to go to the length of using the shell for obtaining directory contents, and you are on the wrong StackExchange for writing applications. – JdeBP Jan 30 '12 at 8:09
  • thanks for the explanation, that's true but it is a workaround for scanning those directories which require Elevation and i don't want to make my code trigger UAC prompt, when i can get results from cmd prompt without requiring higher privilege. – Johnydep Jan 31 '12 at 16:21

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