Find exclude path containing specific files

Question

I am trying to find all directories in a folder recursively while exclude all git submodules by excluding all path containing .git file. How could I do it?

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Explanation:

.git file exists at the root of every submodules folder. This submodule folder could be included anywhere.

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Test Case

$ mkdir Test
$ cd Test
$ mkdir a
$ mkdir b
$ mkdir c
$ cd a
$ mkdir .git
$ cd ..
$ cd b
$ touch .git
$ cd ..
$ cd c
$ mkdir c1
$ mkdir c2
$ cd..
$ find . -type d \( \( ! -name . -exec [ -e {}/.git ] \; -prune \) -o \( \( \
 -name .git\
 -o -name .vscode\
 -o -name node_modules\
 -o -name Image\
 -o -name Rendered\
 -o -name iNotebook\
 -o -name GeneratedTest\
 -o -name GeneratedOutput\
  \) -prune \) -o -print \) | sort 

Expected Results

.
./a
./c
./c/c1
./c/c2

Answer 1

find actions are also tests, so you can add tests using -exec:

find . \( -exec [ -f {}/.git ] \; -prune \) -o \( -name .git -prune \) -o -print

This applies three sets of actions:

• -exec [ -f {}/.git ] \; -prune prunes directories containing a file named .git
• -name .git -prune prunes directories named .git (so the command doesn’t search inside the main .git directory of a repository)
• -print prints anything which isn’t caught by the above.

To only match directories, add -type d, either just before -print, or (to save time processing files):

find . -type d \( \( -exec [ -f {}/.git ] \; -prune \) -o \( -name .git -prune \) -o -print \)

This also works when run this on a directory other than ., by changing the find start path:

find /some/other/path -type d \( \( -exec [ -f {}/.git ] \; -prune \) -o \( -name .git -prune \) -o -print \)

Answer 2

We can create a recursive find:

Add the following lines to a script file:

#!/bin/bash
if [ ! -f "$1"/.git ]; then
    echo "$1"
    find "$1" -mindepth 1 -type d -prune -exec "$0" {} \;
fi

I named the file findifnotgit but it doesn't matter. Then make it executable

chmod u+x findifnotgit

Then run it with the path you want to run as argument:

./findifnotgit .

--> . for current dir

or

./findifnotgit /path/to/search/

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Explanation:

• if [ ! -f "$1"/.git ]; then ... fi Only run the following when there is not .git file inside the current folder ($1)
• We need -mindepth 1 option to let find not find the folder we started with which would create an indefinite loop.
• We need -prune so that find will not descend into directories. We will do this ourselves inside -exec.
• -exec "$0" {} will call the same script $0 with the finds.

Answer 3

Bit of a dirty script, but this will find all directories that don't contain a .git file in them:

#!/bin/bash

# find dirs that contain *.git files and store in array
exclude_dirs=($(find . -type f -iname ".git" | xargs -i dirname {}))

# set up the base command
command="find . -type d"

# loop over each element in array by index
for i in $(seq 0 $(expr ${#exclude_dirs[@]} - 1)); do
    command="${command} -not -path ${exclude_dirs[$i]}"
done

# run the find
eval ${command}

edit:

fixed syntax errors and updated *.git to .git

edit2:

yep that was wrong, my apologies. Edited so it actually works now.

Answer 4

Here is how to tell find not to look inside the .git or .hg repositories.

find .  \( -iname '.git' -o -iname '.hg' \) -prune -false  -o -iname  '*thing-i-am-looking for*'