How to copy some, but not all files?

Rsync handles this nicely.

Example copy all: rsync -aP /folder1/* /folder/2

Example copy all with exclusion: rsync -aP --exclude=x /folder1/* /folder2/

The -aP switch:

• a: Similar to cp -a, recursive, etc.
• P: Shows progress, a nice feature of rsync.

In bash you can use extglob:

 $ shopt -s extglob  # to enable extglob
 $ cp !(b*) new_dir/

where !(b*) exclude all b* files.

You can later disable extglob with

 $ shopt -u extglob

This isn't a feature of cp, it's a feature of your shell (it expands the * to mean all non-dot files), so the answer depends on which shell you're using. For example, zsh supports this syntax:

$ cp ^x /path/to/destination

Where ^x means "all files except x"

You can also combine selection and de-selection patterns, e.g. to copy all wav files except those containing xyz, you can use:

cp *.wav~*xyz*