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   for file in   find   -name    js   do    java -jar config yuicompressor-2 4 2 jar --type js  file -o  file done

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find command in linux def   find command used to locate  search files in unix  linux system         find  search for files in a directory hierarchy    1 exec   Show diagnostic information relating to -exec  -execdir  -ok and -okdir 2 -options   -H  do not follow symoblic links while except while procesing     -L   follow symbolic links   -P  never follow symbolic links    -type c              File is of type c                b      block  buffered  special               c      character  unbuffered  special               d      directory               p      named pipe  FIFO                f      regular file               l      symbolic  link   this  is  never true if the -L option or the -follow option is in effect  unless the                     symbolic link is broken   If you want to search for symbolic links when -L is in effect  use -xtype                s      socket               D      door  Solaris       -Delete     Delete files  true if removal succeeded   If the removal failed  an error message  is  issued      If  -delete      fails  find s exit status will be nonzero  when it eventually exits     find  home mohan a -mindepth 3 -maxdepth 3 -type f -name  quot   txt quot   xargs rm -rf find -type d -name find -type f -Name find  path  -type f -iname  i is case insenstive    find directores a b c and only delete c directory inside have  quot   txt  quot  find  home mohan a -mindepth 3 -maxdepth 3 -type f -name  quot   txt quot   xargs rm -rf find  home mohan a -mindepth 3 -maxdepath 3 -type f -name  quot   txt quot  -delete    delete particular directory have empty file and only  we can delete empty files find  home mohan -type f -name  quot   txt quot  -empty -DELETE    find multiple files and also find empty files find  home mohan -type f    -name  quot   sh quot  -o  -name  quot   txt quot     -empty   delete empty files two or more Files find  home mohan -type f    -nmae  quot   sh quot  -o -name  quot   txt quot     -empty -delete    How to append contents of multiple files into one file find   -type f -name    txt  -exec cat       gt  gt  output file   last modified files finding using less than 1 min  -n  ls -lrth find   -type f -mmin -1   last modified files more than 1 min   n  ls -lrth find   -type f -mmin  1    last modified files exactly one mins find   -type f -mmin 1  last modifiedfiles exactly in one day by using command  -mtime  find   -type f -mtime 10   last modified more than 10 days find   -type  f -mtime  10   last modified less than 10 days find   -type f -mtime -10   How to Find Modified Files and Folders Starting from a Given Date to the Latest Date find   -type f  -newermt  quot 17-11-2020 quot    How to Find a List of    sh    Extension Files Accessed in the Last 30 Days--- -matdimtype ls -lrt find   -type f -iname  quot  sh quot  -atime -30   How to Find a List of Files Created Today  -1 means less than min  ls -lrt   find   -type f -ctime -1 -ls

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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

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There are plenty of good answers  it just took me some time to understand what each element of the command was for and the logic behind it   find   -path   misc -prune -o -name    txt  -print   find will start finding files and directories in the current directory  hence the find     The -o option stands for a logical OR and separates the two parts of the command       -path   misc -prune   OR   -name    txt  -print     Any directory or file that is not the   misc directory will not pass the first test -path   misc  But they will be tested against the second expression  If their name corresponds to the pattern   txt they get printed  because of the -print option   When find reaches the   misc directory  this directory only satisfies the first expression  So the -prune option will be applied to it  It tells the find command to not explore that directory  So any file or directory in   misc will not even be explored by find  will not be tested against the second part of the expression and will not be printed

User · Answer

find   -name    js  -   -name  glob-for-excluded-dir  -prune

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None of previous answers is good on Ubuntu  Try this   find     -path    test    -type f -name    js    -name   -min-     -name   console     I have found this here

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For a working solution  tested on Ubuntu nbsp 12 04  Precise Pangolin       find   -path  dir1  -iname    mp3    will search for MP3 files in the current folder and subfolders except in dir1 subfolder   Use   find   -path  dir1    -path  dir2  -iname    mp3       to exclude dir1 AND dir2

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For what I needed it worked like this  finding landscape jpg in all server starting from root and excluding the search in  var directory   find   -maxdepth 1 -type d   grep -v  var   xargs -I      find      -name landscape jpg  find   -maxdepth 1 -type d lists all directories in    grep -v  var excludes   var  from the list  xargs -I      find      -name landscape jpg execute any command  like find with each directory result from list

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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      Notes    From the EXAMPLES section of the find  GNU findutils  4 4 2 man page

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find      -path       git  -o -path       hg     -prune -o -name    js  -print   The example above finds all   js files under the current directory  excluding folders  git and  hg  does not matter how deep these  git and  hg folders are   Note  this also works   find      -path      git  -o -path      hg     -prune -o -name    js  -print   but I prefer the    notation for consistency with some other tools which would be off topic here

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This is suitable for me on a Mac   find   -name   php -or -path    vendor  -prune -or -path    app cache  -prune   It will exclude vendor and app cache dir for search name which suffixed with php

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i wanted to know the number of directories  files an MB of just the current directory - and that code does exactly what i want  -   the source  -        2791037 Jun  2  2011 foo jpg -     1284734651 M  r 10 16 16 foo tar gz -              0 M  r 10 15 28 foo txt d           4096 M  r  3 17 12 HE d           4096 M  r  3 17 21 KU d           4096 M  r  3 17 17 LE d              0 M  r  3 17 14 NO d              0 M  r  3 17 15 SE d              0 M  r  3 17 13 SP d              0 M  r  3 17 14 TE d              0 M  r  3 19 20 UN   the code  format   s  12d n   find   -type d -not -path           wc -l   awk -v fmt  format   printf fmt    Anzahl Ordner        1-1   find   -type f -not -path           wc -l   awk -v fmt  format   printf fmt    Anzahl Dateien       1     du   -hmS --max-depth 0   awk -v fmt  format   printf fmt    Groesse  MB          1     note  the extra format   s  12d n  is necessary for awk to format the numbers   the result  Anzahl Ordner               8 Anzahl Dateien              3 Groesse  MB             1 228

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This is the only one that worked for me   find   -name MyFile   -path    Directory      Searching for  MyFile  excluding  Directory   Give emphasis to the stars

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The following commands works   find   -path    git -prune -o -print   If You have a problem with find  use the -D tree option to view the expression analysis information   find -D tree   -path    git -prune -o -print   Or the -D all  to see all the execution information   find -D all   -path    git -prune -o -print

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One option would be to exclude all results that contain the directory name with grep  For example   find   -name    js    grep -v excludeddir

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Use the -prune option   So  something like   find   -type d -name proc -prune -o -name    js    The  -type d -name proc -prune  only look for directories named proc to exclude  The  -o  is an  OR  operator

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I find the following easier to reason about than other proposed solutions   find build -not    -path build external -prune    -name    js   you can also exclude multiple paths find build -not    -path build external -prune    -not    -path build blog -prune    -name    js   Important Note  the paths you type after -path must exactly match what find would print without the exclusion  If this sentence confuses you just make sure to use full paths through out the whole command like this  find  full path  -not    -path  full path exclude this -prune         See note  1  if you d like a better understanding   Inside    and    is an expression that will match exactly build external  see important note above   and will  on success  avoid traversing anything below  This is then grouped as a single expression with the escaped parenthesis  and prefixed with -not which will make find skip anything that was matched by that expression   One might ask if adding -not will not make all other files hidden by -prune reappear  and the answer is no  The way -prune works is that anything that  once it is reached  the files below that directory are permanently ignored   This comes from an actual use case  where I needed to call yui-compressor on some files generated by wintersmith  but leave out other files that need to be sent as-is     Note  1   If you want to exclude  tmp foo bar and you run find like this  find  tmp        then you must specify -path  tmp foo bar  If on the other hand you run find like this cd  tmp  find         then you must specify -path   foo bar

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This is the format I used to exclude some paths     find    -type f -name  pattern    -path  excluded path    -path  excluded path    I used this to find all files not in      paths     find    -type f -name       -path          -path

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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

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The -path -prune approach also works with wildcards in the path  Here is a find statement that will find the directories for a git server serving multiple git repositiories leaving out the git internal directories   find   -type d      -not    -path   objects -prune         -not    -path   branches -prune         -not    -path   refs -prune         -not    -path   logs -prune         -not    -path    git -prune         -not    -path   info -prune         -not    -path   hooks -prune

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I have found the suggestions on this page and a lot of other pages just do not work on my Mac OS X system  However  I have found a variation which does work for me   The big idea is to search the Macintosh HD but avoid traversing all the external volumes  which are mostly Time Machine backups  image backups  mounted shares  and archives  but without having to unmount them all  which is often impractical   Here is my working script  which I have named  findit       usr bin env bash   inspired by http   stackoverflow com questions 4210042 exclude-directory-from-find-command Danile C  Sobral   using special syntax to avoid traversing     However  logic is refactored because the Sobral version still traverses    everything on my system  echo                              echo find - from cwd  omitting external volumes date echo Enter sudo password if requested sudo find   -not      -path   Volumes Archive -prune -o   -path   Volumes Boot  OS  X -prune -o   -path   Volumes C   -path   Volumes Data -prune -o   -path   Volumes jas -prune -o   -path   Volumes Recovery  HD -prune -o   -path   Volumes Time  Machine  Backups -prune -o   -path   Volumes SuperDuper  Image -prune -o   -path   Volumes userland -prune      -name   1  -print date echo                              iMac2   jas    The various paths have to do with external archive volumes  Time Machine  Virtual Machines  other mounted servers  and so on  Some of the volume names have spaces in them   A good test run is  findit index php   because that file occurs in many places on my system  With this script  it takes about 10 minutes to search the main hard drive  Without those exclusions  it takes many hours

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-prune definitely works and is the best answer because it prevents descending into the dir that you want to exclude  -not -path which still searches the excluded dir  it just doesn t print the result  which could be an issue if the excluded dir is mounted network volume or you don t permissions   The tricky part is that find is very particular about the order of the arguments  so if you don t get them just right  your command may not work  The order of arguments is generally as such   find  path   options   action     path   Put all the path related arguments first  like   -path    dir1  -prune -o    options   I have the most success when putting -name  -iname  etc as the last option in this group  E g  -type f -iname    js    action   You ll want to add -print when using -prune  Here s a working example     setup test mkdir dir1 dir2 dir3 touch dir1 file txt  touch dir1 file js touch dir2 file txt  touch dir2 file js touch dir3 file txt  touch dir3 file js    search for   js  exclude dir1 find   -path    dir1  -prune -o -type f -iname    js  -print    search for   js  exclude dir1 and dir2 find      -path    dir1  -o -path    dir2     -prune -o -type f -iname    js  -print

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TLDR  understand your root directories and tailor your search from there  using the -path  lt excluded path gt  -prune -o option   Do not include a trailing   at the end of the excluded path   Example   find   -path  mnt -prune -o -name   libname-server-2 a   -print    To effectively use the find I believe that it is imperative to have a good understanding of your file system directory structure   On my home computer I have multi-TB hard drives  with about half of that content backed up using rsnapshot  i e   rsync    Although backing up to to a physically independent  duplicate  drive  it is mounted under my system root     directory   mnt Backups rsnapshot backups     mnt Backups   -- rsnapshot backups       -- hourly 0       -- hourly 1       --          -- daily 0       -- daily 1       --          -- weekly 0       -- weekly 1       --          -- monthly 0       -- monthly 1       --       The  mnt Backups rsnapshot backups  directory currently occupies  2 9 TB  with  60M files and folders  simply traversing those contents takes time      As sudo      to avoid numerous  Permission denied  warnings   time find  mnt Backups rsnapshot backups   wc -l 60314138       60 3M files  folders 34 07 30       34 min  time du  mnt Backups rsnapshot backups -d 0 3112240160   mnt Backups rsnapshot backups       3 1 TB 33 51 88       34 min  time rsnapshot du        lt  lt  more accurate re  rsnapshot footprint 2 9T     mnt Backups rsnapshot backups hourly 0  4 1G     mnt Backups rsnapshot backups hourly 1      4 7G     mnt Backups rsnapshot backups weekly 3  2 9T    total       2 9 TB  per sudo rsnapshot du  more accurate  2 34 54             2 hr 35 min   Thus  anytime I need to search for a file on my    root  partition  I need to deal with  avoid if possible  traversing my backups partition     EXAMPLES  Among the approached variously suggested in this thread  How to exclude a directory in find   command   I find that searches using the accepted answer are much faster -- with caveats   Solution 1  Let s say I want to find the system file libname-server-2 a  but I do not want to search through my rsnapshot backups   To quickly find a system file  use the exclude path  mnt  i e   use  mnt  not  mnt   or  mnt Backups  or           As sudo      to avoid numerous  Permission denied  warnings   time find   -path  mnt -prune -o -name   libname-server-2 a   -print  usr lib libname-server-2 a real    0m8 644s                 8 6 sec   lt  lt  lt  NOTE  user    0m1 669s  sys    0m2 466s     As regular user  victoria   I also use an alternate timing mechanism  as    here I am using 2 gt  dev null to suppress  Permission denied  warnings     START    date    s     amp  amp  find 2 gt  dev null   -path  mnt -prune -o       -name   libname-server-2 a   -print  END    date    s           TIME     END - START     printf  find command took  s sec n    TIME   usr lib libname-server-2 a find command took 3 sec         3 sec   lt  lt  lt  NOTE        finds that file in just a few seconds  while this take much longer  appearing to recurse through all of the  excluded  directories       As sudo      to avoid numerous  Permission denied  warnings   time find   -path  mnt  -prune -o -name   libname-server-2 a   -print find  warning  -path  mnt  will not match anything because it ends with     usr lib libname-server-2 a real    33m10 658s               33 min 11 sec   231-663x slower   user    1m43 142s  sys    2m22 666s     As regular user  victoria   I also use an alternate timing mechanism  as    here I am using 2 gt  dev null to suppress  Permission denied  warnings     START    date    s     amp  amp  find 2 gt  dev null   -path  mnt  -prune -o       -name   libname-server-2 a   -print  END    date    s           TIME     END - START     printf  find command took  s sec n    TIME   usr lib libname-server-2 a find command took 1775 sec       29 6 min   Solution 2  The other solution offered in this thread  SO 4210042  also performs poorly      As sudo      to avoid numerous  Permission denied  warnings   time find   -name   libname-server-2 a   -not -path   mnt   usr lib libname-server-2 a real    33m37 911s               33 min 38 sec   235x slower  user    1m45 134s  sys    2m31 846s  time find   -name   libname-server-2 a   -not -path   mnt     usr lib libname-server-2 a real    33m11 208s               33 min 11 sec user    1m22 185s  sys    2m29 962s     SUMMARY   CONCLUSIONS  Use the approach illustrated in  Solution 1   find   -path  mnt -prune -o -name   libname-server-2 a   -print   i e        -path  lt excluded path gt  -prune -o       noting that whenever you add the trailing   to the excluded path  the find command then recursively enters  all those   mnt   directories -- which in my case  because of the  mnt Backups rsnapshot backups   subdirectories  additionally includes  2 9 TB of files to search   By not appending a trailing   the search should complete almost immediately  within seconds     Solution 2       -not -path  lt exclude path gt       likewise appears to recursively search through the excluded directories -- not returning excluded matches  but unnecessarily consuming that search time     Searching within those rsnapshot backups   To find a file in one of my hourly daily weekly monthly rsnapshot backups      START    date    s     amp  amp  find 2 gt  dev null  mnt Backups rsnapshot backups daily 0 -name   04t8ugijrlkj jpg   END    date    s     TIME     END - START     printf  find command took  s sec n    TIME   mnt Backups rsnapshot backups daily 0 snapshot root mnt Vancouver temp 04t8ugijrlkj jpg find command took 312 sec      5 2 minutes  despite apparent rsnapshot size                                  4 GB   it is in fact searching through  2 9 TB    Excluding a nested directory   Here  I want to exclude a nested directory  e g   mnt Vancouver projects ie claws data   when searching from  mnt Vancouver projects      time find   -iname   test file     ie claws data test file   ie claws test file 0 01 97    time find   -path    data  -prune -o -iname   test file   -print   ie claws test file 0 00 07     Aside  Adding -print at the end of the command suppresses the printout of the excluded directory     find   -path  mnt -prune -o -name   libname-server-2 a    mnt  usr lib libname-server-2 a    find   -path  mnt -prune -o -name   libname-server-2 a   -print  usr lib libname-server-2 a

User · Answer

I consider myself a bash junkie  BUT     for the last 2 years have not find a single bash user friendly solution for this one  By  quot user-friendly quot  I mean just a single call away  which does not require me to remember complicated syntax   I can use the same find syntax as before   so the following solution works best for those     Copy paste this one in your shell and source the    bash aliases   cat  lt  lt   quot EOF quot   gt  gt     bash aliases   usage  source    bash aliases   instead of find type findd   rest of syntax findd       dir  1  shift      find   dir -not -path  quot   node modules   quot  -not -path  quot   build   quot          -not -path  quot    cache   quot  -not -path  quot    git   quot  -not -path  quot   venv   quot       EOF  Of course in order to add or remove dirs to exclude you would have to edit this alias func with your dirs of choice

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This works because find TESTS the files for the pattern   foo     find   -path  dir1    -path  dir2  -name   foo     but it does NOT work if you don t use a pattern  find does not TEST the file   So find makes no use of its former evaluated  true   amp   false  bools  Example for not working use case with above notation   find   -path  dir1    -path  dir2  -type f   There is no find TESTING  So if you need to find files without any pattern matching use the -prune  Also  by the use of prune find is always faster while it really skips that directories instead of matching it or better not matching it  So in that case use something like   find dir -not    -path  dir1  -prune    -not    -path  dir2  -prune    -type f   or   find dir -not    -path  dir1  -o -path  dir2  -prune    -type f   Regards

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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

User · Answer

I prefer the -not notation     it s more readable   find   -name    js  -and -not -path directory

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Instead of   for file in   find   -name    js   do    java -jar config yuicompressor-2 4 2 jar --type js  file -o  file done      and since you don t define which subdirectory you want to exclude  you could use   for file in   find   js -maxdepth 0 -name    js   do    java -jar config yuicompressor-2 4 2 jar --type js  file -o  file done   This syntax will exclude all subdirectories   Take a look at the example below  under my tmp directory I have an huge  archive  subdirectory which contains 17000-4640 12360 files  And this directory is located on a slow NFS  While the 1st syntax scans the  archive  subdirectory and performs poorly  the 2nd syntax only scans the   pdf  files contained in my current dir and performs    not that bad    tmp   time  find   -name   pdf    wc -l  17000  real    0m40 479s user    0m0 423s sys     0m5 606s   tmp   time  find  pdf -maxdepth 0 -name   pdf    wc -l  4640  real    0m7 778s user    0m0 113s sys     0m1 136s   That 2nd syntax is quite interesting  in the following example I want to check if file or60runm50958 pdf exists and is more than 20 minutes old  See for yourself how the 2nd syntax is more efficient  This is because it avoids scanning the archive subdirectory    tmp   time find   -name or60runm50958 pdf -mmin  20   or60runm50958 pdf  real    0m51 145s user    0m0 529s sys     0m6 243s   tmp   time find or60runm50958 pdf -maxdepth 0 -name or60runm50958 pdf -mmin  20 or60runm50958 pdf  real    0m0 004s user    0m0 000s sys     0m0 002s

User · Answer

how-to-use-prune-option-of-find-in-sh is an excellent answer by Laurence Gonsalves on how -prune works   And here is the generic solution   find  path to search                        -type d                                        -path  path to search exclude me          -o                                        -name exclude me too anywhere                                                    -prune                                  -o                                        -type f -name     js  -print   To avoid typing  path to seach  multiple times  wrap the find in a pushd    popd pair   pushd  path to search                     find                                        -type d                                        -path   exclude me                        -o                                        -name exclude me too anywhere                                                    -prune                                  -o                                        -type f -name     js  -print             popd

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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   -

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Use the -prune switch  For example  if you want to exclude the misc directory just add a -path   misc -prune -o to your find command  find   -path   misc -prune -false -o -name    txt   Here is an example with multiple directories  find   -type d    -path dir1 -o -path dir2 -o -path dir3    -prune -false -o -name    txt   Here we exclude   dir1    dir2 and   dir3 in the current directory  since in find expressions it is an action that acts on the criteria -path dir1 -o -path dir2 -o -path dir3  if dir1 or dir2 or dir3   ANDed with type -d  To exclude directory name at any level  use -name  find   -type d    -name node modules -o -name dir2 -o -path name    -prune -false -o -name    json

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Not sure if this would cover all edge cases  but following would be pretty straight forward and simple to try   ls -1 grep -v -e ddl -e docs  xargs rm -rf  This should remove all files directories from the current directory excpet  ddls  and  docs

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To exclude multiple directories   find   -name    js  -not    -path    dir1  -o -path    dir2         To add directories  add -o -path    dirname      find   -name    js  -not    -path    dir1  -o -path    dir2    -o -path    dir3        But maybe you should use a regular expression  if there are many directories to exclude

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I tried command above  but none of those using  -prune  works for me  Eventually I tried this out with command below   find      -name        -prune -a   -name  directory

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If -prune doesn t work for you  this will   find -name    js  -not -path    directory      Caveat  requires traversing all of the unwanted directories

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If search directories has pattern  in my case most of the times   you can simply do it like below   find   n  -name    tcl     In above example  it searches in all the sub-directories starting with  n

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For FreeBSD users    find   -name    js  -not -path   exclude this dir

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There is clearly some confusion here as to what the preferred syntax for skipping a directory should be   GNU Opinion  To ignore a directory and the files under it  use -prune   From the GNU find man page  Reasoning  -prune stops find from descending into a directory  Just specifying -not -path will still descend into the skipped directory  but -not -path will be false whenever find tests each file   Issues with -prune  -prune does what it s intended to  but are still some things you have to take care of when using it    find prints the pruned directory    TRUE That s intended behavior  it just doesn t descend into it  To avoid printing the directory altogether  use a syntax that logically omits it   -prune only works with -print and no other actions    NOT TRUE  -prune works with any action except -delete  Why doesn t it work with   delete  For -delete to work  find needs to traverse the directory in DFS order  since -deletewill first delete the leaves  then the parents of the leaves  etc    But for specifying -prune to make sense  find needs to hit a directory and stop descending it  which clearly makes no sense with -depth or -delete on     Performance  I set up a simple test of the three top upvoted answers on this question  replaced -print with -exec bash -c  echo  0        to show another action example   Results are below  ----------------------------------------------   of files dirs in level one directories  performance test prune me     702702      performance test other        2          ----------------------------------------------   gt  find   performance test  -path   performance test prune me  -prune -o -exec bash -c  echo   0          performance test  performance test other  performance test other foo      of files  3  Runtime ns   23513814   gt  find   performance test  -not    -path   performance test prune me  -prune    -exec bash -c  echo   0          performance test  performance test other  performance test other foo      of files  3  Runtime ns   10670141   gt  find   performance test  -not -path   performance test prune me   -exec bash -c  echo   0          performance test  performance test other  performance test other foo      of files  3  Runtime ns   864843145   Conclusion  Both f10bit s syntax and Daniel C  Sobral s syntax took 10-25ms to run on average  GetFree s syntax  which doesn t use -prune  took 865ms  So  yes this is a rather extreme example  but if you care about run time and are doing anything remotely intensive you should use -prune    Note Daniel C  Sobral s syntax performed the better of the two -prune syntaxes  but  I strongly suspect this is the result of some caching as switching the order in which the two ran resulted in the opposite result  while the non-prune version was always slowest   Test Script     bin bash  dir   performance test   setup       mkdir   dir     exit 1   mkdir -p   dir prune me a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u w x y z          dir other     find   dir prune me  -depth -type d -exec mkdir       A  Z       find   dir prune me  -type d -exec touch       1  1000       touch   dir other foo     cleanup       rm -rf   dir     stats       for file in   dir     do     if    -d   file      then       count   find   file    wc -l        printf   -30s  -10s n    file    count      fi   done    name1       find   dir  -path   dir prune me  -prune -o -exec bash -c  echo   0             name2       find   dir  -not    -path   dir prune me  -prune    -exec bash -c  echo   0            name3       find   dir  -not -path   dir prune me   -exec bash -c  echo   0            printf  Setting up test files    n n  setup echo  ----------------------------------------------  echo    of files dirs in level one directories  stats   sort -k 2 -n -r echo  ----------------------------------------------   printf   nRunning performance test    n n   echo   gt  find     dir    -path     dir prune me    -prune -o -exec bash -c   echo     0              name1 s   date   s N  name1 num   name1   wc -l  e   date   s N  name1 perf    e-s   printf       of files   name1 num  Runtime ns    name1 perf n n   echo   gt  find     dir    -not      -path     dir prune me    -prune      -exec bash -c   echo     0             name2 s   date   s N  name2 num   name2   wc -l  e   date   s N  name2 perf    e-s   printf       of files   name2 num  Runtime ns    name2 perf n n   echo   gt  find     dir    -not -path     dir prune me     -exec bash -c   echo     0             name3 s   date   s N  name3 num   name3   wc -l  e   date   s N  name3 perf    e-s   printf       of files   name3 num  Runtime ns    name3 perf n n   echo  Cleaning up test files     cleanup

User · Answer

You can also use regular expressions to include   exclude some files  dirs your search using something like this   find   -regextype posix-egrep -regex       js vue s css php html json    -and -not -regex      node modules vendor         This will only give you all js  vue  css  etc files but excluding all files in the node modules and vendor folders

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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

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I was using find to provide a list of files for xgettext  and wanted to omit a specific directory and its contents  I tried many permutations of -path combined with -prune but was unable to fully exclude the directory which I wanted gone   Although I was able to ignore the contents of the directory which I wanted ignored  find then returned the directory itself as one of the results  which caused xgettext to crash as a result  doesn t accept directories  only files    My solution was to simply use grep -v to skip the directory that I didn t want in the results   find  project directory -iname    php  -or -iname    phtml    grep -iv   some directory    xargs xgettext   Whether or not there is an argument for find that will work 100   I cannot say for certain  Using grep was a quick and easy solution after some headache

[linux] How to exclude a directory in find . command

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