On 05/03/2017 12:34 PM, Richard Owlett wrote:
On 05/03/2017 10:13 AM, rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:On Wednesday, May 03, 2017 10:57:09 AM Richard Owlett wrote:The man page for find confuses me. Looking for explanatory material I found and tried to follow examples in http://mywiki.wooledge.org/UsingFind#A-prune . I tried find /home/richard \( -type d -name .* -prune \) -o -atime -42 -print and find /home/richard \( -type d -name .* -prune \) -atime -42 -print unsuccessfully. Each got an "find: paths must precede expression: .." error HOW?Can't answer your question off the top of my head, but, when I run into problems like this, I try to run subsets of the command to try to narrow down the problem. For example, I might first try find /home/richard--see if it works (provides any output) and what that output looks like, then try adding switches or other parts of the command one at a time.*GRIN* Been using that basic procedure since mid 1950's [when volume of single flip-flop could be measured in cubic inches ;] I had spent more than an hour: 1. exploring find (with and without the -atime option) 2. attempting to add -prune to the mix That was when a series of links led to mywiki.wooledge.org . An unknown amount of non-productive effort led to my post. I thought I had narrowed the problem to -prune as that seemed the only thing in common to failures was -prune. The actual globing problem was hidden in the noise. MEA CULPA: globs have bitten me before :{ Thanks all.
I should have included the final form that did what I wanted:find /media/richard/pre-fail/home/richard \( \( -type d -name '.*' -prune \) -o \( -type d -name Downloads -prune \) -o \( -type d -name seamonkey -prune \) -o \( -type d -name websites -prune \) \) -o -atime -42 -print
It wasn't until I got the "-type d -name '.*' -prune" phrase correct that I realized how much other "noise" was in the original output ;/
A tutorial question for fellow neophytes: What 2 things had been flagged as possible problem sources early on?