I am writing a script to delete certain files
say
gives following output
I do not want to delete file in home directory but rest all.
In one shell script.
So first line I am clear with but what can be the second line,

a for-loop and the command "dirname" will help here...
(if [ ! `dirname $i` = "/home" ]; then ...)

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Hi,

Is this what you are looking for:

find / -name lighttpd | grep -v "^/home/" | xargs ls -l

The grep -v part excludes all entries that contain /home/, all that is left is given to ls -l. The xargs command is needed to "feed" the ls -l command.

I used ls -l instead of rm -rf for safety (find is a powerful command). Replace ls -l with rm -rf if the output generated is what you want.

Hope this helps.

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druuna, when using a grep approach (the OP didn't specify whether he wanted to exclude files in subdirectories of /home, too, but let's assume he wants that), you should at least use an anchor to only match paths starting whti /home like this:
egrep -v '^/home/'

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Excluding the unwanted directories from the search should speed up the whole process, e.g.
echo is for testing purposes.

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Hi thanks for all the replies.I liked all the replies great.

For performance reasons, I'd suggest to follow colucix' idea

You're welcome

colucix solution is the one to go for, less impact then the other solutions.

I could not understand this completely.
Can you be a bit elaborate.
I tried -wholename by lighttpd
and did not used exec I am just trying to see the way you suggested to use prune

Yes, of course. The action -prune just tells find to not descend into directories. Let's look at every single step:

1. Look for a directory whose whole name is /home
The name is relative to the specified search path, in this case / (root). This tell us that there is (obviously) only one item whose name is /home.

2. Add -prune
Nothing different here, because the action -prune alone is evaluated as true and the result is to print the directory name. Actually the rule here is: if the expression contains no actions other than -prune, -print is performed on all files for which the expression is true.

3. Add an alternative (logical OR)
Note that the expression here contains at least one action other than -prune (-print), so that the rule cited above does not apply. For this reason, when find encounters /home the left-hand-side of the expression is true and the output is null now. Instead for all the other directories, the left-hand-side of the expression is false and the right-hand-side is evaluated (in this case every file whose name is lighttpd is printed out).

Note that if you omit -print (without adding any other action) the rule above is applied and -prune still has the effect to not descend into the directory, but the directory name is printed out:
In my previous example the action -exec prevents this behaviour.

Finally you can omit multiple directories from the search by expanding the left-hand-side of the expression with other alternatives (embedded in escaped parentheses). For example:
Hope this clarifies.

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Just seen your addition. Based on the explanation in my previous post, this command tells to search into /, into /home and an item called lighttpd in the current working directory:
The error just tells you that a file or a directory named lighttpd does not exist in the current working dir. Also note that the files in /home will be printed twice, beacuse find first searches recursively into /, then again into /home. Specifying a multiple search path might have unpleasant side effects!

Add -prune
No other output here, since the / (root) directory is not descended. Just the two directory names listed in the (multiple) search path are printed out, since the line does not contain any action other than -prune!

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As usual colucix has provided the good oil along with a great explanation. I thought I would just add an extra choice as I read the original query
to mean not from my home directory, but this says nothing about what if in others, so the simple addition of $HOME works nicely

Great thanks all.

If lighttpd is a directory name also
I am having certain directories also with the same name how do I put it here on command line.
Also I forgot to ask the meaning of {} at the end of the command.

{} represents the items found

rm -r will get rid of a directory and all sub-directories and files.