2.11) How do I construct a shell glob-pattern that matches all files
      except "." and ".." ?

      You'd think this would be easy.

      *        Matches all files that don't begin with a ".";

      .*             Matches all files that do begin with a ".", but
             this includes the special entries "." and "..",
             which often you don't want;

      .[!.]*   (Newer shells only; some shells use a "^" instead of
             the "!"; POSIX shells must accept the "!", but may
             accept a "^" as well; all portable applications shall
             not use an unquoted "^" immediately following the "[")

             Matches all files that begin with a "." and are
             followed by a non-"."; unfortunately this will miss
             "..foo";

      .??*     Matches files that begin with a "." and which are
             at least 3 characters long.  This neatly avoids
             "." and "..", but also misses ".a" .

      So to match all files except "." and ".." safely you have to use
      3 patterns (if you don't have filenames like ".a" you can leave
      out the first):

        .[!.]* .??* *

      Alternatively you could employ an external program or two and use
      backquote substitution.  This is pretty good:

      `ls -a | sed -e '/^\.$/d' -e '/^\.\.$/d'`

        (or `ls -A` in some Unix versions)

      but even it will mess up on files with newlines, IFS characters
      or wildcards in their names.

      In ksh, you can use:  .!(.|) *

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