Exclude list of files from find

Question

If I have a list of filenames in a text file that I want to exclude when I run find, how can I do that? For example, I want to do something like:

fi         


        

Answer 1

This solution will go through all files (not exactly excluding from the find command), but will produce an output skipping files from a list of exclusions. I found that useful while running a time-consuming command (file /dir -exec md5sum {} \;).

1. You can create a shell script to handle the skipping logic and run commands on the files found (make it executable with chmod, replace echo with other commands):

    $ cat skip_file.sh
    #!/bin/bash
    found=$(grep "^$1$" files_to_skip.txt)
    if [ -z "$found" ]; then
        # run your command
        echo $1
    fi

2. Create a file with the list of files to skip named files_to_skip.txt (on the dir you are running from).

3. Then use find using it:

    find /dir -name "*.gz" -exec ./skip_file.sh {} \;