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

find -name '*.js' -not -path './node_modules/*' -not -path './vendor/*'

seems to work the same as

find -name '*.js' -not \( -path './node_modules/*' -o -path './vendor/*' \)

and is easier to remember IMO.

Answer 2

For those of you on older versions of UNIX who cannot use -path or -not

Tested on SunOS 5.10 bash 3.2 and SunOS 5.11 bash 4.4

find . -type f -name "*" -o -type d -name "*excluded_directory*" -prune -type f

Answer 3

This is the only one that worked for me.

find / -name MyFile ! -path '*/Directory/*'

Searching for "MyFile" excluding "Directory". Give emphasis to the stars * .

Answer 4

I found the functions name in C sources files exclude *.o and exclude *.swp and exclude (not regular file) and exclude dir output with this command:

find .  \( ! -path "./output/*" \) -a \( -type f \) -a \( ! -name '*.o' \) -a \( ! -name '*.swp' \) | xargs grep -n soc_attach

Answer 5

You can use the prune option to achieve this. As in for example:

find ./ -path ./beta/* -prune -o -iname example.com -print

Or the inverse grep “grep -v” option:

find -iname example.com | grep -v beta

You can find detailed instructions and examples in Linux find command exclude directories from searching.

Answer 6

Better use the exec action than the for loop:

find . -path "./dirtoexclude" -prune \
    -o -exec java -jar config/yuicompressor-2.4.2.jar --type js '{}' -o '{}' \;

The exec ... '{}' ... '{}' \; will be executed once for every matching file, replacing the braces '{}' with the current file name.

Notice that the braces are enclosed in single quote marks to protect them from interpretation as shell script punctuation^*.

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Notes

^* From the EXAMPLES section of the find (GNU findutils) 4.4.2 man page