Exclude sub directories from find: why is -not -path not working?

Question

java -jar ~/Downloads/simian-2.3.35/bin/simian-2.3.35.jar files $(find ~/App/Classes/ -type f -name "*.m"  -not -path  "Lib/excludethisdir/*")

I'm trying to run simian and pass a file argument into it, but excluding a directory just isn't working. The Lib directory is contained in Classes

Can anyone point out why it's not working (The command runs, but it doesn't exclude)

Answer 1

You nested find command should be:

find ~/App/Classes/ -type f -name "*.m"  -not -path "./Lib/excludethisdir/*"

ie add ./ before your excluded path.

Or even better:

find ~/App/Classes/ -path "./Lib/excludethisdir/*" -prune -o -type f -name "*.m" -print

Answer 2

It is NOT and answer! I have the following similar structure.

$ tree ./tmp
./tmp
├── file.ext
├── file.other_ext
└── inner_tmp
    ├── inner_file.ext
    └── inner_file.other_ext

1 directory, 4 files
$

When I try

$ find ./tmp -type f -name '*.ext' -not -path './inner_tmp/'

OR

$ find ./tmp -path './inner_tmp/*' -prune -o -type f -name '*.ext' -print

I get the following:

./tmp/inner_tmp/inner_file.ext
./tmp/file.ext

The question is: Why inner_tmp directory is included in result? What am I missing here?