Find executable files recursively

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

You can do:

find . -exec ./is_dir.py {} \; -o -print

It will list everything that is not a directory. Assuming that is_dir.py is executable (chmod +x is_dir.py) and contains something like:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import sys
import os

if os.path.isdir(sys.argv[1]):
    sys.exit(0)
sys.exit(1)

And if is_dir.py generates output of its own, you can do:

 rm -f nondir.lst
 find . -exec ./is_dir.py {} \; -o -exec echo  {} >> nondir.lst \;

so that its outoput doesn't get mixed with the list of names for which is_dir.py fails.