How to search for containers that don't match the result of "docker ps --filter"?

Question

I can find a docker container by name: docker ps --filter='name=mvn_repo'. Is there a way (without resorting to bash/awk/grep etc.) to negate this filter and list all containers except the one with the given name?

Answer 1

You can use docker inspect to do this, I created a container with --name=test111, it appears as /test111, so if I do

docker inspect -f '{{if ne "test111" .Name }}{{.Name}} {{ end }}' $(docker ps -q) /test111 /sezs /jolly_galileo /distracted_mestorf /cranky_nobel /goofy_turing /modest_brown /serene_wright /fervent_lalande

but if I do a filter with the /, so it becames

docker inspect -f '{{if ne "/test111" .Name }}{{.Name}} {{ end }}' $(docker ps -q) /sezs /jolly_galileo /distracted_mestorf /cranky_nobel /goofy_turing /modest_brown /serene_wright /fervent_lalande

I do not get it.

Kudos to Adrian Mouat for his reference post on docker inspect

http://container-solutions.com/docker-inspect-template-magic/

And, as he says

"(Unfortunately Docker prints a new-line for each container, whether it matches the if or not)." If I put a blank line the formatting is lost.

Answer 2

I came here trying to figure out a similar problem... found part of the solution in Mykola Gurov's comment, which I modifed to get to this:

docker ps -aq | grep -v -E $(docker ps -aq --filter='name=mvn_repo' | paste -sd "|" -)

Mykola's solution only works if there is one match with the docker ps filter. So if you've got a whole bunch of containers you want to exclude that match a filter pattern - it will fail because grep can only work on a single expression.

The solution I've provided converts the output of that into a regular expression and then uses grep with extended regexp.

To break it down...

docker ps -aq --filter='name=mvn_repo' | paste -sd "|" -

produces output like this:

d5b377495a58|2af19e0029a4

where this is the result of each of the container id's joined with a | character to formulate a regular expression that can then be used with grep.

Then when used in a sub-shell like this with grep:

grep -v -E $(docker ps -aq --filter='name=mvn_repo' | paste -sd "|" -)

resolves to something like this:

grep -v -E d5b377495a58|2af19e0029a4

then when we can then pipe the the output of docker ps -aq to get something like this:

docker ps -aq | grep -v -E d5b377495a58|2af19e0029a4

Answer 3

Is there a way (without resorting to bash/awk/grep etc.) to negate this filter and list all containers except the one with the given name?

The Docker command line reference doesn't mention a way to do this. I therefore conclude that negating a filter is not currently supported by the Docker CLI.

Answer 4

The following command may be used:

comm -2 -3 <(docker ps -aq | sort) <(docker ps -aq --filter='name=mvn_repo' | sort)

Explanation of how the code works:

• docker ps -aq shows a list of all running containers
• docker ps -aq --filter='name=mvn_repo' shows a sorted filtered list of containers
• comm -2 -3 <(... | sort) <(... | sort) takes sorted lists and provides lines unique to the first list (of running containers). See man comm for more details of comm.