'find' - can i prune on the basis of pathnames?

[Chris Torek]

In article <435 at stylus.cme-durer.ARPA> klm at cme-durer.ARPA (Ken Manheimer)
writes:
>... The problem concerns pruning absolute paths from a directory-structure
>traversal. This is as opposed to pruning relative directory-names,
>which is easy to do using a '-name <dirname> -prune' clause.

It cannot be done directly.  You *can* do this:

  find <path> -exec expr {} = /foo/bar \| {} = /foo/baz \; -prune -o <pred>

This will not perform <pred> on /foo/bar and /foo/baz; if you want them
done, but not any files within them, try

  find <path> \( -exec expr <exprs> \; ! -prune \) -o <pred>

>Is it in fact the case that find will not perform a prune on the basis
>of a (non-trivial) pathname...?

It is.  -prune simply says `do not search the current path any deeper',
and then succeeds a la -print.  (At least, that is what the one I put
in on our Vaxen does, and I did it from the Sun documentation.)

>... I know i could accomplish what i want using a post-filter ...

That would probably be fastest.
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris at mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris