Linux: Copy all files with exception

Sometime we need to copy entire directory with the except of a few files or a specific directory. This could easily be accomplished with a regular expression as follows:

Note: $ is the command prompt, not the code you type.

$ mkdir test
$ cd test
$ touch a.txt
$ touch b.txt
$ mkdir mod
$ cd mod
$ touch c.txt 
$ touch d.txt
$ mkdir ../views
$ cd ../views
$ touch e.txt 
$ touch f.txt
$ mkdir ../../test2
$ cd ..

Following is the directory structure created by this code:

$ ls -R
$ .:
a.txt  b.txt  mod  views

./mod:
c.txt  d.txt  touch

./views:
e.txt  f.txt  touch

Now we copy all files except for the mod directory:

$ cp -a [^mod]* ../test2

This is what it looks like after copying. All files are copied with the exception of the mod directory and its contents.

$ ls -R ../test2
../test2:
a.txt  b.txt  views

../test2/views:
e.txt  f.txt  touch