Exclude a sub-directory using find

Question

I have directory structure like this

data
|___
   |
   abc
    |____incoming
   def
    |____incoming
    |____processed
   123
    |___incoming
   456
    |___i         


        

Answer 1

This is what I did to exclude all the .git directories and passed it to -exec for greping something in the

find . -not -path '*/\.*' -type f -exec grep "pattern" [] \;

• -not -path '*/\.*' will exclude all the hidden directories
• -type f will only list type file and then you can pass that to -exec or whatever you want todo

Answer 2

By following answer for How to exclude a directory in find . command:

find . \( -name ".git" -o -name "node_modules" \) -prune -o -print

Answer 3

-name only matches the filename, not the whole path. You want to use -path instead, for the parts in which you are pruning the directories like def/incoming.

Answer 4

This works:

find /home/feeds/data -type f -not -path "*def/incoming*" -not -path "*456/incoming*"

Explanation:

• find /home/feeds/data: start finding recursively from specified path
• -type f: find files only
• -not -path "*def/incoming*": don't include anything with def/incoming as part of its path
• -not -path "*456/incoming*": don't include anything with 456/incoming as part of its path

Answer 5

Just for the sake of documentation: You might have to dig deeper as there are many search'n'skip constellations (like I had to). It might turn out that prune is your friend while -not -path won't do what you expect.

So this is a valuable example of 15 find examples that exclude directories:

http://www.theunixschool.com/2012/07/find-command-15-examples-to-exclude.html

To link to the initial question, excluding finally worked for me like this:

find . -regex-type posix-extended -regex ".*def/incoming.*|.*456/incoming.*" -prune -o -print 

Then, if you wish to find one file and still exclude pathes, just add | grep myFile.txt.

It may depend also on your find version. I see:

$ find -version
GNU find version 4.2.27
Features enabled: D_TYPE O_NOFOLLOW(enabled) LEAF_OPTIMISATION SELINUX

Answer 6

find $(INP_PATH} -type f -ls |grep -v "${INP_PATH}/.*/"