How to get list of files that don't match patterns in bash?

Question

I have a file with joker character patterns:

./include/*

./src/*

etc.

From the current directory I would like to recursively get the list of files that do not match these patterns.

Answer 1

find . -type f \! \( -path '*/include/*' -o -path '*/src/*' \)

Breakdown:

• \! is negating the group
• \( ... \) is how to do groups of conditions for find
• -o ORs conditions
• Everything else should be self-explanatory.

If you have a new enough version of find, you could enhance it with:

find . -type f -regextype posix-egrep -regex \! -path '.*/(include|src)/.*'

Answer 2

First approach, but not using a list of files, others feel free to improve on that:

find . -type f -print | grep -v '.\/src\/*'