How can I restrict find to only search specific sub-directories?

Question

I am using find in a Bash script. How can I modify that code to include a specific directory under 'bin' , ie './bin/php/' (while still ignoring all other sub-directories of 'bin')?

Current code:

find . -name '*.php' \
-and ! -path './bin/*' \

Answer 1

Is that what you mean?

find . \( \! -iregex ^./bin/.\* -o -iregex ^./include/something/.\* \) \
 -name \*.php

• yoavf: No - but I've rewrote the question so hopefully I'm explaining myself better now.
• Michael Krelin - hacker: yoavf, so I've edited my reply

Answer 2

find /bin /bin/php -maxdepth 1 -name "*.php"

Proof of concept

$ tree /bin
/bin
|-- ash
|-- dont_search
| |-- hide_me.php
| `-- hide_me.txt
|-- du
|-- file.php
|-- fmt
|-- php
| |-- hide_me.txt
| `-- show_me.php
`-- zsh
2 directories, 184 files

Result

$ find /bin /bin/php -maxdepth 1 -name "*.php"
/bin/file.php
/bin/php/show_me.php

Notice that /bin/dont_search/hide_me.php did not match

Answer 3

Try this:

find . ./bin/php -path ./bin -prune -o -print

This will ignore files that are within ./bin, too, though.

By the way, it's "find" rather than "Bash find".

Answer 4

GNU find

find . -name "*.txt" ! -iregex ".*/bin/.*"