Dropping filename extensions with find -exec

You need to sort by the last field (considering / as a field separator). Unfortunately, I can't think of a tool that can do this when the number of fields varies (if only sort -k could take negative values).

To get around this, you'll have to do a decorate-sort-undecorate. That is, take the filename and put it at the beginning followed by a field separator, then do a sort, then remove the first column and field separator.

find . ! -path "./build*" -name "*.txt" |\
    awk -vFS=/ -vOFS=/ '{ print $NF,$0 }' |\
    sort -n -t / |\
    cut -f2- -d/

That awk command says the field separator FS is set to /; this affects the way it reads fields. The output field separator OFS is also set to /; this affects the way it prints records. The next statement says print the last column (NF is the number of fields in the record, so it also happens to be the index of the last field) as well as the whole record ($0 is the whole record); it will print them with the OFS between them. Then the list is sorted, treating / as the field separator - since we have the filename first in the record, it will sort by that. Then the cut prints only fields 2 through the end, again treating / as the field separator.

while [ -f /tmp/restarting_server ] ; do {
    [ $((i=i+1)) -ge 10 ] && exit 1
    sleep 1 
} ; done

You dont need find if you know already the exact filename, pathname, and conditions under which a file should be acceptably found.

So the other problem - exiting your script from your -exec statement - is maybe not the problem you consider it to be. find doesn't build in an option for killing its parent shell because the shell already provides it.

find … -exec sh -c kill\ $$ \;

Consider also that you can use this construct for signalling based on existing paths even if you're not certain before hand where they'll be:

trap 'stuff to do' USR1    
… #later… 
find … -exec sh -c kill\ -USR1\ $$ \;

And this opens a lot of other options to you as well:

find … -exec sh -c exec… 

EDIT:

I've just thought of other options involving parameter expansion to make your shell exit without find's -exec at all that could be used in other ways:

hold_file="$(find . -name file)"
${hold_file:+false} : || exit 1

or

N= ; hold_file="$(find . -name file)"
${hold_file:+${N:?lock file remains, exiting...}}

Both of these will only cause an exit if the variable to which you assign find's stdout is neither null or unset. And of course, should you desire to fail based on an empty find, you can do the same with :- instead of :+ and omitting the $Null value variable entirely.

Or just to alter find's exit status:

$(find . -name file -exec echo false \; ) : || exit 1