Bash globbing files only?

[Jacques B.]

> So, as expected then, yes?
Yes, as expected.  But not what I understood the OP was trying to do.
Unless I'm mistaken, that syntax (ls [^.]*/) was used to assign the
directory names in the current working directory to a variable.
However that is not the output of that command. The output is the
directories and their contents.  Hence where much of my confusion
came.

> Does it make sense now?

Yes, it finally clicked this morning around 5:00 am when I was
driving.  I now understand the reason for the */ part of the syntax.

Ultimately the OP's wishes would be best/most accurately met using the
find command from what I can gather.

dirs=`find -maxdepth 1 -type d \! -regex "^\.$"`
(the \! -regex "^.$" to eliminate the . directory)
files=`find -maxdepth 1 -type f`

Or to remove the path name (./) to have only the file names (or
directory names), I would use:
files=`find -maxdepth 1 -type f -printf "%f "`
resulting in a space delimited output.

Jacques B.