How do you exclude files in the find command

[chrchcol]

---

I am using the find command and I am trying to to exclude any files that start with the . in front of them such as .bash_history

[fernape]

I think there is not a way to explicitly exclude that files, but you can use the -regex or -iregex flag to match only the files that not begin with '.'

Regards

[Cabhan]

-regex matches the entire path, so -name and -iname are probably better, since they only match the actual filename.

[drl]

Hi.

Here's one way:

#!/bin/sh

# @(#) s3       Demonstrate removal of display of dot-names.

FILES="t1 .t1 t2 .t2"
rm -f $FILES
touch $FILES
echo " Files present:"
ls -al

echo
echo " Files listed:"
find . -type f -print |
grep -v '/[.]

Which produces:

% ./s3
 Files present:
total 12
drwxr-xr-x  2 drl drl 216 Jul 25 14:31 .
drwxr-xr-x  4 drl drl 104 Jul 25 14:06 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 drl drl   0 Jul 25 14:31 .t1
-rw-r--r--  1 drl drl   0 Jul 25 14:31 .t2
-rwxr--r--  1 drl drl  79 Jul 25 14:09 s1
-rwxr--r--  1 drl drl 131 Jul 25 14:13 s2
-rwxr--r--  1 drl drl 212 Jul 25 14:30 s3
-rw-r--r--  1 drl drl   0 Jul 25 14:31 t1
-rw-r--r--  1 drl drl   0 Jul 25 14:31 t2

 Files listed:
./s1
./s2
./s3
./t1
./t2

cheers, drl

[Cabhan]

One thing to look out for is that drl's solution will also skip files in hidden directories. So if there's a non-hidden file in a hidden directory, it won't display.

That may be what you want, but you should just beware of that.

[drl]

Hi.

Good catch, Cabhan!

We'd need to find if chrchcol wanted to ignore everything hidden. I'll fool around with the RE. I't's probably necessary to make sure that the / is a final separator (ihmmm, ignoring perhaps the pathological case of a dot-name empty directory) ... cheers, drl

[drl]

Hi.

Here's a revision and test ... cheers, drl

#!/bin/sh

# @(#) s4       Demonstrate removal of display of dot-names.

FILES="t1 .t1 t2 .t2"
rm -rf $FILES .hidden
touch $FILES
mkdir .hidden
touch .hidden/t1 .hidden/.t1
echo " Files present:"
ls -AR

echo
echo " Files listed:"
find . -type f -print |
grep -v '/[.][^/]*$'

Results:

% ./s4
 Files present:
.:
.hidden  .t1  .t2  s4  t1  t2

./.hidden:
.t1  t1

 Files listed:
./s4
./t1
./t2
./.hidden/t1

[amitsharma_26]

I am using the find command and I am trying to to exclude any files that start with the . in front of them such as .bash_history

find /root/ -not -name ".*" -name *.conf

Simple.

[drl]

Hi, amitsharma_26.

find /root/ -not -name ".*" -name *.conf -name *.conf

Thanks for posting this solution. The first part of this, namely:

find /root/ -not -name ".*"

does seem to work (adjusting "/root/" appropriately), and I like the simplicity, but the addition of

-name *.conf

seemed to inhibit the display of everything. What is it supposed to do? ... cheers, drl

[amitsharma_26]

Dear drl,

Initial query is itself a bit confusing in the same regards. Though we can relate a same scenario like..

How about searchin for all the mp3 files with excluding all those who are starting by alphabet "A" ?

Or Even how about searchin for all the mp3 files with excluding all those who are smaller than 3 MB of size ?

With both of the two of above queries we can use the same method of excluding particular criteria.

find /mp3 -not -iname "A*" -iname "*.mp3"
& find /mp3 -not -size -3M -iname "*.mp3"

Though the later one can also be written as find /mp3 -size +3M -iname "*.mp3" , but it was just to correlate the way of excluding some particular criteria suited files.

Regards
Amit sharma..

p.s. My way of searchin *.conf did not really meant for that command to look really effective though later part of that command really didnt what i was concentrated.