Exclude sub directory from find

Question

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?

Answer 1

./inner_tmp will not match any path in this case, for the path you specified as starting point is ./tmp , so all paths to be found will start with ./tmp .

Try this instead:

find ./tmp ! \( -path './tmp/inner_tmp' -prune \) -type f -name '*.ext'