Find and excluding all hidden directories

metallica1973 · 10-27-2011, 10:41 PM

How can I exclude all hidden directories from everyones home directories when using find:

Code:

find /home -depth -path '*/.*' -prune -o -print
cd /home
find . -depth \( -wholename \./*/\.\* \) -prune -o -print
find . -depth ! -path "./*/.*" -print
find . -depth \( path './*/.*' -o -prune -print \)
find . -depth ! \(  -path './*/.*' -o -prune -print \)

I want to remove all ".*" hidden junk from all the home directories:

/home/user1/.*
/home/user2/.*
/home/user3/.*

?????????????

sag47 · 10-28-2011, 12:33 AM

Code:

find . -not -path '*/.*/*' -not -name '.*'

This excludes both the contents of hidden directories (-not -path) and hidden files (-not -name). -not and ! are interchangeable.

Sample:
./some/path/is/here/filename

-not -path works on the whole ./some/path/is/here/filename
-not -name works on filename only.

If you want to see other find tricks I list some in my LQ blog.

SAM

fukawi1 · 10-28-2011, 12:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by metallica1973

How can I exclude all hidden directories from everyones home directories when using find:

Quote:

Originally Posted by metallica1973

I want to remove all ".*" hidden junk from all the home directories:

Not exactally which you are trying to do...

but to do the latter

Code:

find /home/ -name \.\* | xargs rm -r

should do the trick...

(i left the -f out for safety, but you may want to include it)

jschiwal · 10-28-2011, 12:52 AM

The OP doesn't want to delete all hidden directories. That would delete everyone's desktop settings.

---

Sometimes it is better to use the pattern ".[^.]*" instead of ".*" to prevent ".." from matching.

fukawi1 · 10-28-2011, 01:13 AM

Quote:

I want to remove all ".*" hidden junk from all the home directories:

/home/user1/.*
/home/user2/.*
/home/user3/.*

I guess I misread that then....

jschiwal · 10-28-2011, 07:25 AM

The OP wants to remove the hidden junk from the find results, not remove the files themselves.

sag47 · 10-28-2011, 01:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jschiwal

Sometimes it is better to use the pattern ".[^.]*" instead of ".*" to prevent ".." from matching.

There is no need to do that for the '..' hard link. find will never enter that directory. See the -noleaf option of the find man pages. My solution in the first post does what the OP wants to do.

SAM

metallica1973 · 10-28-2011, 04:47 PM

Gentlemen,

This actually worked:

Code:

find /home -depth ! -path "*/\.*"

Many thanks for the comments