Find command excluding directories and some files

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

hello.
I try to print a list of files but excluding some directories and some files.
I would like to write a command for :
find "from_dir" "ignore dir1, dir2, ..." "ignore file1, file2,...." "where file are older than 2017-02-03T06:00:00"

Note that "DO_IT" is a local function in the script and is exported like this

function DO_IT () {
    MY_PATH1="$1"
    if [[  ! -d "$MY_PATH1" ]] ; then
        echo "doing : $MY_PATH1"
    fi
}
export -f DO_IT

The first part run with success :

find /home/tux_user -type d \( -path /home/tux_user/.mozilla -o -path /home/tux_user/.cache -o -path  /home/tux_user/.local/share/RecentDocuments  -o -path  /home/tux_user/.local/share/kscreen  \) -prune -o -newermt '2017-02-03T06:00:00' -exec bash -c 'DO_IT "$0" '  {} \;

Now I want to exclude some files.
So I have add this part of code inside the find command

-o \( ! -name ".direct*" ! -name ".Xauthor*"  ! -name ".xsession-erro*"  ! -name "*.xsession-errors-:*"  ! -name ".bash_histor*"   \)

The command is now :

find /home/tux_user -type d \( -path /home/tux_user/.mozilla -o -path /home/tux_user/.cache -o -path  /home/tux_user/.local/share/RecentDocuments  -o -path  /home/tux_user/.local/share/kscreen  \) -prune -o \( ! -name ".direct*" ! -name ".Xauthor*"  ! -name ".xsession-erro*"  ! -name "*.xsession-errors-:*"  ! -name ".bash_histor*"   \) -o  -newermt '2017-02-03T06:00:00' -exec bash -c 'CHERCHE "$0" '  {} \;

But the specific files are still there (".direct*" ".Xauthor*" ".xsession-erro*" "*.xsession-errors-:" ".bash_histor").

Any help is welcome

2

Not sure I can follow the entire logics, but

  • what does CHERCHE "$0" do to the files in question?
  • find executes actions if the test's result is TRUE. -o will add TRUE results, not remove any from before. So, to exclude some files, this might not be the desired operator?
3

What the script does is hard to see. But.
Consider that sometimes using a tool for a complex task sometimes requires other tools.

As a template:

find path1 path2 path3 | grep -v '^\.*'

Which removes so-called hidden files - ones starting the dot character. They are hidden because the default for ls is not to display them. ls -a will display them.

If you have a "crazy" list of filenames to ignore - one that has too many names - use a pattern file with grep.

find path1 path2 path3 | grep -f pattern_file -v

Where pattern_file looks like:

.direct*
.X*
.x*
4

You want to continue if not certain names, so the last -o should be a -a or omitted.
The following skips all dot-dirs and dot-files

find /home/tux_user -type d -name ".?*" -prune -o -type f ! -name ".*" -print
5

The problem :

Here a solution of my problem

find "$MY_PATH" -type d \( "${FA[@]}" \) -prune -o \( -newer $MY_PATH/FROM_DATE_FILE.txt \! -newer $MY_PATH/TO_DATE_FILE2.txt   \)  -o -type f \( "${FB[@]}" -exec bash -c 'DO_IT $0 ' {} \; \) | sort

where

"${FA[@]}" contains a list of directories to exclude
FA=( -path  $MY_PATH/.cache  -o -path  $MY_PATH/.dbus ....  -o  -path  $MY_PATH/.config/kdeconnect )

where

"${FB[@]}" contains a list of files to exclude
FB=( ! -name  ".direct*" ! -name ".Xauthor*" ! -name ".xsession*" ....   ! -name "drkonqirc"  ! -name "granatierrc"  )

date are set using the command touch like

touch -d �2017-04-13 16:21:42�  $MY_PATH/FROM_DATE_FILE.txt 
touch -d �2017-04-14 00:00:00�  $MY_PATH/TO_DATE_FILE.txt
1 Like
6

And thank you also to Chubler_XL see : Bash expansion