find files not in a list

Question

I have a list of files in file.lst. Now I want to find all files in a directory dir which are older than 7 days, except those in the file.lst

Answer 1

Pipe your find command through grep -Fxvf:

find -mtime +7 -print | grep -Fxvf file.lst

What the flags mean:

-F, --fixed-strings
              Interpret PATTERN as a list of fixed strings, separated by newlines, any of which is to be matched.    
-x, --line-regexp
              Select only those matches that exactly match the whole line.
-v, --invert-match
              Invert the sense of matching, to select non-matching lines.
-f FILE, --file=FILE
              Obtain patterns from FILE, one per line.  The empty file contains zero patterns, and therefore matches nothing.