How to exclude a directory in find . command

Question

I\'m trying to run a find command for all JavaScript files, but how do I exclude a specific directory?

Here is the find code we\'re using.<

Answer 1

a good trick for avoiding printing the pruned directories is to use -print (works for -exec as well) after the right side of the -or after -prune. For example, ...

find . -path "*/.*" -prune -or -iname "*.j2"

will print the path of all files beneath the current directory with the `.j2" extension, skipping all hidden directories. Neat. But it will also print the print the full path of each directory one is skipping, as noted above. However, the following does not, ...

find . -path "*/.*" -prune -or -iname "*.j2" -print

because logically there's a hidden -and after the -iname operator and before the -print. This binds it to the right part of the -or clause due to boolean order of operations and associativity. But the docs say there's a hidden -print if it (or any of its cousins ... -print0, etc) is not specified. So why isn't the left part of the -or printing? Apparently (and I didn't understand this from my first reading the man page), that is true if there there is no -print -or -exec ANYWHERE, in which case, -print is logically sprinkled around such that everything gets printed. If even ONE print-style operation is expressed in any clause, all those hidden logical ones go away and you get only what you specify. Now frankly, I might have preferred it the other way around, but then a find with only descriptive operators would apparently do nothing, so I guess it makes sense as it is. As mentioned above, this all works with -exec as well, so the following gives a full ls -la listing for each file with the desired extension, but not listing the first level of each hidden directory, ...

find . -path "*/.*" -prune -or -iname "*.j2" -exec ls -la -- {} +

For me (and others on this thread), find syntax gets pretty baroque pretty quickly, so I always throw in parens to make SURE I know what binds to what, so I usually create a macro for type-ability and form all such statements as ...

find . \( \( ... description of stuff to avoid ... \) -prune \) -or \
\( ... description of stuff I want to find ... [ -exec or -print] \)

It's hard to go wrong by setting up the world into two parts this way. I hope this helps, though it seems unlikely for anyone to read down to the 30+th answer and vote it up, but one can hope. :-)