Question

how to use the find command to find files/directories which are not matching the pattern. for eg:

find <some options > -name "dontfile.txt"

should give me output of all the find whose file name is not dontfile.txt

Answer 1

find <some options> ! -name "dontfile.txt"

this should be the answer. thanks Dave.

Answer 2

Use the -not operator:

find <some options > -not -name "dontfile.txt"

You may need to add parenthesis to get the desired effect, depending on how complex the rest of the command is:

find <some options > ( -not -name "dontfile.txt" )

Answer 3

$ ls -ltr

total 0

-rw-r--r-- 1 mraj baudba 0 Nov 18 05:35 d.txt

-rw-r--r-- 1 mraj baudba 0 Nov 18 05:35 c.txt

-rw-r--r-- 1 mraj baudba 0 Nov 18 05:35 b.txt

-rw-r--r-- 1 mraj baudba 0 Nov 18 05:35 a.txt

$ find . -name "a.txt" -print

./a.txt

$ find . ! -name "a.txt" -print

.

./b.txt

./c.txt

./d.txt

$