Running the "find" command, but want to exclude certain dirs

[john guardian]

Hi. Is there a way to use the find command to get a general listing of ALL files on the system while EXCLUDING certain directories such as "/usr/local"?

[Jonathan Fife · Accepted solution]

You could use the prune flag, but it doesn't let you specify the full path of the directory, just the directory name. In other words, any directory named "local" will be excluded.

Syntax:
find / \( -name local -a -type d -prune \) -o \( -print \)

I would more likely just pipe the output of find through grep and -v the directories I didn't want to see.

find / -print | grep -v ^/usr/local

HTH

[A. Clay Stephenson]

To exclude /usr/local and /etc/lp starting from / (which is normally not a good idea):

find / ! \( -path '/usr/local/*' -o -path '/etc/lp/*' \)

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi JOhn:

# find / -type f ! -path "/usr/local/*"

...should meet your needs. This will look for ALL FILES on ALL mountpoints, but skip the '/usr/local/*' directory.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

John,

check this find discussion.

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=975461

Regards,
Robert-Jan

[Sandman!]

For example if you wanted to exclude "/usr/local", "/etc" and "/sbin" dirs then...

# find / \( -path "/usr/local" -o -path "/sbin" -o -path "/etc" \) -prune -o -type f -print

cheers!