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regexbashpathfindrealpath

Ignore a sub-directory in all situations (relative, absolute...)


I want to skip sub-directory $SKIP using find.
What a pity this basic command does not work in all cases:

find $DIR -path $SKIP -prune -o print

Please help me improving the script skipit.sh:

#!/bin/bash
SKIP=$1
shift
find "${@:-.}" -path "$SKIP" -prune -o -print

Basic examples

The example are based on following directory tree:

dir
├── skip
├── a
└── b

OK:

> ./skipit.sh  dir/skip  dir
dir
dir/a
dir/b

fail:

> ./skipit.sh  dir/skip  ./dir
./dir
./dir/skip
./dir/b
./dir/a

fail:

> ./skipit.sh  ./dir/skip  dir
dir
dir/skip
dir/b
dir/a

using -regex

> cat  skipit.sh
#!/bin/bash
SKIP=${1#./}  #remove leading './'
shift
find "${@:-.}" -regex "[.]?/?$SKIP" -prune -o -print

OK:

> ./skipit.sh  dir/skip  ./dir
./dir
./dir/b
./dir/a

OK:

> ./skipit.sh  ./dir/skip  dir
dir
dir/b
dir/a

fail:

> ./skipit.sh  ./dir/skip  dir/skip/..
dir/skip/..
dir/skip/../skip
dir/skip/../b
dir/skip/../a

My find version

> find --version
find (GNU findutils) 4.4.2
Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by Eric B. Decker, James Youngman, and Kevin Dalley.
Construit avec GNU gnulib version e5573b1bad88bfabcda181b9e0125fb0c52b7d3b
Fonctions activées : D_TYPE O_NOFOLLOW(enabled) LEAF_OPTIMISATION FTS() CBO(level=0) 

I could use realpath but as this command is not installed by default, I do not want to force other users to have to install it. I can also use readlink, but I would prefer a solution based on find features ;)

the challenge

/home/user/dir1
├── skip
└── dir
    └── skip
/home/user/dir2
└── skip

The output of skipit.sh must ignore directory /home/user/dir1/skip only in the following examples:

/home/user> ./skipit.sh  /home/user/dir1/skip dir1 dir2
dir1
dir1/dir    
dir1/dir/skip
dir2
dir2/skip

/home/user> ./skipit.sh  dir1/skip ./dir1 ./dir2
./dir1
./dir1/dir    
./dir1/dir/skip
./dir2
./dir2/skip

/home/user> ./skipit.sh  ../user/dir1/skip ./dir1 ./dir2
./dir1
./dir1/dir    
./dir1/dir/skip
./dir2
./dir2/skip

/home/user> ./skipit.sh  dir1/skip /home/user/dir1 /home/user/dir2
/home/user/dir1
/home/user/dir1/dir    
/home/user/dir1/dir/skip
/home/user/dir2
/home/user/dir2/skip

Solution

  • Try this:

    #!/bin/bash
    
    SKIP="$(sed -r 's|^(\.?\./)*||' <<<$1)"
    shift
    
    for arg in "${@:-.}"; do
      root="$(realpath "$arg")"
      find "$root" -regex ".*$SKIP$" -prune -o -print
    done
    

    Sample folder structure:

    /tmp/test
    ├── dir1
    │   ├── dir
    │   │   └── skip
    │   └── skip
    └── dir2
        └── skip
    

    Output:

    /tmp/test $ ./test.sh dir/skip dir1/skip/..
    /tmp/test/dir1
    /tmp/test/dir1/dir
    /tmp/test/dir1/skip
    
    /tmp/test $ ./test.sh /tmp/test/dir1/skip dir1 dir2
    /tmp/test/dir1
    /tmp/test/dir1/dir
    /tmp/test/dir1/dir/skip
    /tmp/test/dir2
    /tmp/test/dir2/skip
    
    /tmp/test $ ./test.sh dir1/skip dir1 dir2
    /tmp/test/dir1
    /tmp/test/dir1/dir
    /tmp/test/dir1/dir/skip
    /tmp/test/dir2
    /tmp/test/dir2/skip
    
    /tmp/test $ ./test.sh ../test/dir1/skip ./dir1 ./dir2
    /tmp/test/dir1
    /tmp/test/dir1/dir
    /tmp/test/dir1/dir/skip
    /tmp/test/dir2
    /tmp/test/dir2/skip
    
    /tmp/test $ ./test.sh dir1/skip /tmp/test/dir1 /tmp/test/dir2
    /tmp/test/dir1
    /tmp/test/dir1/dir
    /tmp/test/dir1/dir/skip
    /tmp/test/dir2
    /tmp/test/dir2/skip