How to use -path and -prune with find

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

OK, I'm trying search and destroy tabs again.

This time I'm having trouble excluding certain directories from my search.

Here is what I have tried and it is not ignoring the top level build directory:

find . -path ./build -prune -name \*.java -o -print | xargs grep -i ' '

I don't understand the -o and -print either. Don't they default to printing them all the time? They seem to be necessary when I was experimenting with using -regex instead of -name.

Thanks,
Siegfried

2

Hi siegried, find is ignoring the contents of the directory build, but still reporting the empty directory. So the pruning works. It is just that is you pass it as a parameter to grep -i then it will still grep in all the files in that directory ...

You could try:

find !(build) -name \*.java | xargs grep -i ' '

( tab character between quotes lost in translation )

3

Under /home/brad/runksh I have a file called test.funcs
under /home/brad/runksh/lib I have a file called runksh.funcs
under /home/brad/scratch I have sc.funcs: -

 
/home/brad/runksh ls -l
-rwxr-xr-x 1 brad root 12887 2009-03-08 18:22 lib/runksh.funcs
-rw-r--r-- 1 brad root 0 2009-10-23 22:04 scratch/sc.funcs
-rw-r--r-- 1 brad root 0 2009-10-23 21:51 test.funcs

To exclude lib: -

 
TX5XN:/home/brad/runksh>find . \( -name lib -type d -prune \) -o -name \*.funcs -print 
./test.funcs
./scratch/sc.funcs

You do need the print although I don't know why: -

 
TX5XN:/home/brad/runksh>find . \( -name lib -type d -prune \) -o -name \*.funcs 
./test.funcs
./lib
./scratch/sc.funcs
4

OK, that helps!

Now (I'm just curious) how do I exclude multiple directories using the !(build) syntax?

This is mostly working except it does not exclude "build.xml"!

find . \( -name build -type d -prune \) -o \( -path ./.metadata -type d -prune  \) -o \( -name apollo\* -type d -prune  \) -o \( -name env -type d -prune  \) -o -name \*.xml -o -name \*.java -o \( -name build.xml -prune \)  |  xargs grep -n "	"

Here I am trying to exclude the top level directory called "build" as well as the multiple files inside ./src named build.xml.

Thanks,
Siegfried

5

I have never tried the !(build) syntax so would not mind playing around with it.

It would help if you actually posted a cut down ls -l output of the directory structure you are talking about rather than giving a verbal description. That way people can replicate it and try things out.

6

Just to clarify: the !(build) syntax is not part of the find command but it is a pattern marching operator that tells the shell to expand anything but the build directory and pass that the result on to find.

7

That's really interesting, Thanks!