How to un-select files in shell wildcard patterns

[Polytropon]

I'm interested in a convenient method to "un-select" files
when using regular (sh) shell wildcards. It's quite easy to
describe things like

	*.tex

to perform an operation on all LaTeX source files, or

	*a*

on all files whose name contains (at least) one "a". Patterns
that are based on the inclusion of certain attributes are not
a problem to deal with using the builtin pattern matching of
the shell.

But what about the opposite? Let's say, perform an operation
on all files _except_ the LaTeX source files, or all files
whose name does _not_ contain an "a"?

Is there a good method to do this, except creating a kind
of "custom regex wrapper script" that does the selection part,
for further use with `subshell` or | xargs?



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...