Exclude directory in (native Solaris) find command

findsolaris

I'm trying to exclude the directory /zones in my find command. I don't have GNU find available, just the native Solaris find.

I tried something like this:

find / -type d ! -name zones

The problem is that with this exclude I also lose sub-directories like /etc/zones.

Is there a way to specify the complete directory name like:

find / -type d ! -name ^\/zones

I already tested lots of approaches but I can't include the / in front of the string.

Best Answer

Here is a portable way:

find / -type d -exec test {} = /zones \; -prune -o -type d -print

Note that GNU find might be available on an alternate directory depending on the Solaris release you are using (like /usr/sfw/bin/gfind, /usr/gnu/bin/find, ...).

Related Solutions

Solaris equivalent for depth/prune

You're confusing two unrelated options that have vaguely similar names:

-depth doesn't take any argument. If present, it tells find to process the contents of a directory before processing the directory itself.
-maxdepth N (where N is an integer) limits the recursion to N levels of subdirectories.

The -maxdepth option is an extension found in some versions of find, but not Solaris's. There's a trick to using only standard options to find to process a directory without recursing: use -prune on subdirectories, but exclude the toplevel directory. Since the only way to match the toplevel directory is by name, arrange for the name to be . (which will never be the name of a subdirectory).

find /directory/to/traverse/. -name . -o \
                              -type d -prune -o \
                              -name '*.log' -print

Bash – How to have find recurse into subdirectories when using -prune option

You need to do:

sudo find /var/lib/foo -name '.snapshot' -prune -o -print

it will print whatever is not named ".snapshot", and if ".snapshot" is a directory it will also not descend into it.

why ? because "-prune" is an action (as '-print' is also another action), doing nothing except preventing to go further down in the subdir. And it always return "true", so here, ( -name ... -prune ) is true if and only if the file or dir is named "...", and you you want everything else, hence the -o ( -print ).

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Solaris equivalent for depth/prune

Bash – How to have find recurse into subdirectories when using -prune option

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